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NYC Neighborhoods – Hells Kitchen

Hell’s Kitchen, also known as Clinton, is a neighborhood on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City that is home to many immigrants. Thirty-fourth Street (or Fourth Street) is believed to be its southern border, 59th Street is considered to be its northern border, eighth avenue is considered to be its eastern border, and Hudson River is considered to be its western boundary.

Hell’s Kitchen was a haven for poor and working-class Irish Americans from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century. Despite the fact that the neighborhood’s gritty reputation had long kept real-estate prices below those of most other parts of Manhattan, the City Planning Commission’s Plan for New York City reported in 1969 that development pressures related to the neighborhood’s Midtown location were driving people of modest means out of the neighborhood.

Since the early 1980s, the neighborhood has been gentrifying, and rents have increased at an alarming rate. Hell’s Kitchen, the location of the Performers Studio training school and a short walk from Broadway theaters, has long been a haven for aspiring and established actors alike. Today, the neighborhood is home to a substantial LGBTQ population, as well as a huge number of LGBTQ-friendly pubs and establishments.

Hell’s Kitchen is a neighborhood in Manhattan’s Community District 4 (MCD 4). The 10th Precinct and the Midtown North Precincts of the New York City Police Department patrol the neighborhood. Transportation, medical, and warehousing infrastructure assistance are provided to the Manhattan commercial district by this part of Manhattan. It is also well-known for its vast assortment of multiethnic, tiny, and reasonably priced restaurants, delicatessens, bodegas, bars, and other forms of nightlife that are all located in the area.

With the influx of affluent young professionals and inhabitants from the “old days,” Hell’s Kitchen has evolved into an increasingly upmarket area, with rents in the district rising at a rate significantly higher than the overall average for Manhattan in recent years. Additionally, as people of Chelsea have relocated further north, it has gained a big and diversified community. The extension of Midtown Manhattan’s tower construction into Hell’s Kitchen, at least north of 42nd Street, has long been prohibited by zoning restrictions. When the David Childs and Frank Williams-designed Worldwide Plaza was completed in 1989 on the site of the former Madison Square Garden, a full city block between 49th and 50th Streets and between Eighth and Ninth Avenues that was exempt from special district zoning rules, it established a beachhead for the future development of the area. A real estate building boom occurred on Eighth Avenue as a result of the completion of this project, which included the construction of the Hearst Tower at 56th Street and Eighth Avenue.

 

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