Why is the neighborhood called hell kitchen

Basketball games on public courts, soccer in the street, or rollerblading are common occurrences throughout the neighborhood. Traveling down the piers and docks of the Hudson River offers impressive views of the skyline. Residents also enjoy a beautiful park along the West Side Highway, complete with paths and grassy knolls. Athletic fields and courts are available to everyone, while kayaks and boat tours entice those want to spend time out on the open water.

Ninth Avenue is known for its rows of ethnic restaurants across a variety of cuisines. Here, dining is simple and accessible - you can often arrive at most places without a reservation and be seated soon after. Dives and lounges are casual and popular with locals. Smaller spots specialize in specifics; Pony Bar features an impressive menu of domestic brews while Xai Xai is the best South African wine bar in town.

The market: Mostly affordable walkups and doorman buildings, and newer luxury-high rise buildings. Exceptions are often given to larger development projects; a few high-rise luxury buildings have sprung up and become popular with professionals. New developments and businesses are springing up throughout the neighborhood, and extending the skyline onward and upward.

ZIPs Show More. The first large groups of immigrants to Clinton came from Ireland fleeing the famine at home in the 's; weavers arrived from Scotland and cabinet makers from Germany. Negroes working on construction of a distribution reservoir on the site of the present New York Public Library and Bryant Park settled around 53rd Street and 9th Avenue.

The Herald newspaper proclaimed that the children from 26 ethnic groups attending Public School at West 37th Street when it opened in represented:.

As if to contradict, an "Evening Post" reporter complained that:. During the past few years an immense population of Irish and Germans have settled on the vacant lots between 37th and 50th Streets. They have built their own cabins and live there, the dogs, goats and pigs often all in the same room with the family. Their business is the poorest street or house labor -- picking rags, selling goat's milk, gathering cinders from the ashes to sell to other poor, cleaning the new houses, working on the docks, and among them, Germans making the wooden splinters for match manufacturers.

Photograph, Churches, schools, social organizations, places for recreation and entertainment, shops of all sorts, grocers, butchers, fishmongers opened shop in Clinton. Doctors, hospitals, orphanages, homes for the aged and social service organizations formed. The populace pulled in city services of police patrols, fire stations and sanitation workers.

Families filled clusters of two and three story frame houses. Overcrowded multiple tenant buildings throughout the city led its housing inspector to report that one tenth of the population lived in deplorable housing.

He was promptly removed from his post. Religion played a central role in neighborhood life. Ethnic and religious groups worshipped in accord with different traditions and built churches to suit. During the second half of the nineteenth century an impressive number of houses of worship spread through the neighborhood. Clare's Church for Italians, , West 36th with a school following two years later 2nd German M. Church, , W. Clement's 2nd German Baptist Church, 46th, in became part of the assemblage by Wessell, Nickel, Gross for a new piano factory building, which in turn became an apartment cooperative in James Presbyterian Church colored 3rd site West Ambrose Church, , West 54th.

A religious order now uses this and the adjacent building as a residence for young working women. The Catholic Polish National church which had been housed at West 50th Street moved to 40th off 9th Avenue in Renamed St. Clemens Mary, with children attending services, the school continued until The Croatian Franciscans took over the 50th Street church renamed St.

Cyril and Methodius. Today the building is a Bysantine church, its medieval style painting and frescoes magnificently restored. The astonishing number within one square mile on this incomplete list clearly indicates the centrality of church activity in the lives of Clinton residents throughout its history. Over the years, however, many of the church buildings have been demolished or converted to other uses. Ethnic and economic groups did not always mix harmoniously.

Racial animosity existed sporadically and in pockets. During the Civil War Draft Riots of July a white mob hanged negroes at 32nd Street and 8th Avenue and women slashed at three of the bodies. Police routed the mob of 5, but it returned later and hung more until artillery was used against them.

Police jailed only 20 men. Two white women, Mrs. Anna Shotwell and her niece Ms. Murray, had founded the home in Although the fire destroyed the building, all the children were saved.

In July a crowd of Irish men in the neighborhood threw bricks from house roofs at Orangemen parading up 8th Avenue.

A riot ensued. Police summoned the State Militia which fired on the crowd using real bullets instead of expected blanks. In when whitemen attacked James Harris at 41st Street and 10th Avenue, he drew a gun and killed two of them. A year later, racial tensions erupted into riots in August. While his wife waited outside, a negro man ducked into a store on the comer of 41st Street and 8th Avenue to buy a cigar. Police in civilian clothes arrested the wife.

The husband, not knowing that the man accosting his wife was a police officer, fought with him. In an ensuing scuffle, the policeman hit him with a club; the husband slashed him with a penknife, ran and disappeared. On the day of the policeman's funeral and that night, hordes of 5, young whites 16 to 19 years old mobbed the streets from 34th to 42nd west of 8th Avenue.

Joined by policemen, they chased negroes dragging them from streetcars or wherever found to savagely beat them. There are now two new subway stops closer to Hudson River than ever before in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood and tourist attractions galore.

Hell's Kitchen is now filled with luxury stores, delicious pre-Broadway show dining options, and theater that's not quite Broadway. Kitchens, especially those in restaurants, are exceedingly hot. Gordon is notoriously a difficult person to work for, to say the least. And she's dead!