Hell's Kitchen
From The Peopling of New York City: Irish Communities
Neighborhoods: Woodlawn | Inwood | Hell's Kitchen | Woodhaven |
|
Built Environment/Economy
What is Hell's Kitchen?
Hell’s Kitchen generally refers to the area between 39th and 59th street, and from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River. It is full of small streets and old tenement buildings, characteristic of Old Immigration. The buildings are close together and one can easily imagine how when it was home populous immigrant families it received its reputation.
History of Hell's Kitchen
Hell's Kitchen derives its name from its notorious reputation as the epitome of “the classic nineteenth-century slum with a social hell.” The neighborhood came into prominence in the late 1850’s as a mixture of both black and Irish slums. But more importantly, it served as a hotbed of criminal activities between various Irish gangs. During the 1950’s, as the presence of Puerto Ricans became more and more prevalent, the ethnic tension between the established residents of the neighborhood (namely the Irish and German) and the newcomers intensified the atmosphere of violence and hostility. Ironically, such grim reality of life in Hell’s Kitchen was romanticized and ultimately immortalized in Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.
Hell's Kitchen Today
Today, Hell’s Kitchen is a drastically different place from what it used to be. That is to say, it is pacing through the process of gentrification “and the tenements are becoming co-ops or being replaced by corporate skyscrapers.” Furthermore, it now boasts of a population that accurately represents the level of diversity seen elsewhere in New York City, as “the Irish and German population has made room for Italians, Greeks, Eastern Europeans, Puerto Ricans, Peruvians and Ecuadorians". Interestingly enough, as parts of Hell’s Kitchen become more and more gentrified, even taking on the “more genteel name of Clinton", there seems to be a pushback effort from many locals who wish to “hold onto its original working-class character”, as well as its “rough-and-tumble-past.”
Tour of Hell's Kitchen
Below is a video that is taken in Hell's Kitchen and discusses many of the great attributes of the neighborhood. In it you are able to see the culture and environment that people who live there love so much. The tenements are a tribute to the immigrants such as the Irish that once lived there and made up a majority of the population and defines the community.