Hell's Kitchen

Former waterfront neighbourhood in the west of Midtown Manhattan, New York City. After the Civil War, it became increasingly notorious for gangsterism, which flourished amid its slaughterhouses, railway yards, and squalid tenement buildings. Its name is thought to derive from one of the gangs that once roamed the area. Many of the waves of impoverished immigrants who came to the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries made their first home here.

The area once occupied by Hell's Kitchen is not precisely defined, but is generally thought to have extended from the 20s or low 30s up to 59th Street, west of Seventh or Eighth Avenue. Events that gradually erased the district included the development of the Times Square area in the 1890s, the building of the trans-Hudson tunnel and station on the Pennsylvania Railroad (1904–10), and the opening of the Lincoln Tunnel with its approaches in the 1930s. A small Black community in the far north of the area, along with one in neighbouring San Juan Hill, moved to Harlem around the time of World War I. The former Hell's Kitchen area remains a transportation hub, and Times Square has inherited some of its sleazy reputation. Residential redevelopment since the 1970s has been accompanied by attempts to rename the area Clinton.