Why is Clinton (Midtown West) in Manhattan called Hells Kitchen?
Hell’s Kitchen has a long history of violence and poverty. Several legends compete to explain how Hell’s Kitchen got its name, but there’s no dispute about why. From the mid-1800s into the 1980s, this Midtown area, from 34th Street to 59th Street between Eighth Avenue and the Hudson River, was one tough neighborhood. Though it’s now known by many for its Off Broadway theaters, chic restaurants and luxury condominium towers (and as the name of a reality TV show), Hell’s Kitchen has a history that’s rich with gangsters and ghosts, streetwalkers and speakeasies, mysterious disappearances and gruesome murders. During Prohibition it was said there were more speakeasies than children in the Irish Catholic area. On Restaurant Row (West 46th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues) the long-popular Barbetta is one of the establishments in former speakeasy locations. (Danny’s Grand Sea Palace, now, sadly, closed, was another.) The speakeasies were run by gangsters like the dapper Owney (the Kil
