By Karen Sternheimer
Before there was the reality cooking show and restaurants of the same name, Hell’s Kitchen was a New York neighborhood on the westside of midtown Manhattan. Now often called Clinton or Midtown West, the more colorful name represented the once rough-and-tumble community just west of the theater district, from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River, and approximately West 34th to West 59th Streets.
The origins of the name aren’t entirely clear, but it likely reflected the gang violence that once dominated the area, filled with crowded, dangerous tenement buildings. “Hell’s Kitchen” evokes a sense of discomfort, to say the least. Like many cities in the nineteenth century, new immigrants often found work in local slaughterhouses and on nearby docks, as well as breweries that once operated in the neighborhood. The work was difficult and dangerous, and often controlled by the mob. With jobs in the area for working-class people, the community was likely one that new immigrants flocked to and more affluent families stayed away from.
In the twentieth century, public housing projects concentrated poverty in this neighborhood. And with the eventual decline of shipping into Manhattan and relocation of the slaughterhouses that once provided jobs, the area declined further.
Continue reading “Working in Hell’s Kitchen: Labor Markets and the Communities they Shape”
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