The evolution of historic facades in the ever-changing neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen built on cultural revolution. The surge in population diversity increases the enrichment in religious Architectural development. A 160 year development on Hell’s kitchen from 1840-2000 contributed to the resident Population increase from 1850 to the Roman Catholic and Israel Temple of during the 1920s. These historical landmarks serve as great inspiration to architects and art throughout Hell’s Kitchen. Inspiration took the form of music, theatre and film through the device community. The African- American community revolutionized music through the creation of jazz and ragtime music while film drew its support through the Churches. As Hell’s Kitchen stands as a momentous place, it is also a family housed with wide ideas.
Matthews-Palmer Playground on 45th St. (formerly May Matthews Playground) is named after two teenagers May Mathews and Alexandra Palmer, both of whom were stewards to both the community and the park. Mathews was a social worker who brought children to the park in the 1930s and executive director at Hartley House, a community center, and Palmer was a founding member of the West Forty-Sixth Street Block Association as well as a legend for both locking the park in the 70s and 80s at night and inviting local youth to meals at her apartment. She was a Parks Department neighborhood liaison and helped revitalize the parks in many ways, including working with an urban planning group in the 1970s to renovate the park and make it a community-building location.
Hell’s Kitchen Park (formerly DeWitt Clinton Park) on 10th Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets was originally 7.4 acres with sloped edges on three sides with a view of the Hudson River. Later, it became 5.8 acres with a blocked view of the river due to the building of the West Side Elevated Highway and the New York Passenger Terminal in 1931. The park circa 1905 was designed by Samuel Parsons, Jr. Frances “Frannie” Griscom Parsons created the centerpiece of the Children’s Farm School in DeWitt Clinton Park that not only transformed the plot of land into a vegetable garden but taught children under her care discipline and cooperation, steering them away from the crime they were surrounded with. In the first three years nearly 3,000 children benefited from the program and city gardens grew popular, reaching its peak between 1900 and 1920. This garden closed in 1932. The park also has the Flanders Field Memorial, designed by sculptor Burt W. Johnson and architect Harvey W. Corbett, depicting a World War I soldier. The monument was dedicated in 1930 and restored in 1997. The playground renovation in 1996 cost $635,000 and included the installation of the dog runs and play equipment, as well as landscaping. In 2009, a $3.4 million renovation reconstructed the ballfields and installed synthetic turf as well as adding an element of green design where water runoff can be captured within the site. It offers a dog run, sports fields, and gardens.
Clinton Community Garden on West 48th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues is the first NYC community garden to become parkland, circa 1984. The 108 plot garden was established in 1978 by the West 48th Street Block Association, with the Green Guerillas securing a lease for the site and work on the land. In 1981, the City proposed putting the land up for auction. As a result, the gardeners formed the Committee to Save Clinton Community Garden and ran the “Square Inch Campaign” in efforts to raise donations to purchase the land. They also wrote letters to Mayor Edward I. Koch, and as the story gathered attention, Mayor Koch eventually supported them by buying the first square inch of the garden. Despite their great efforts, they failed to raise enough by the deadline but luckily a month before the auction in 1984, the garden was transferred to Parks. Currently, 2,000 residents have keys to the park.
In the 1840’s, Hell’s Kitchen was aresidential district comprised of African-American laborers for the Croton Aqueduct
1858 “The Hermitage” Samuel L. Norton Residence 43rd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, United States History, Local History & Genealogy Division, The New York Public Library Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
From the 1850’s, Irish and German immigrants worked along the Hudson River docks, and in slaughterhouses, factories, lumberyards, and warehouses, and construction for the Hudson River Railroad, later renamed the New York Central. Manhattan’s population increase as well as the building boom in the post-Civil War period of the 1860s caused residential growth, from row houses to tenements, in this area. Some of the more well known groups were the West Side Cowboys who worked to clear the path for trains along 10th Avenue and 11th Avenue. The frequency of fatal accidents on 11th Avenue earned it the nickname Death Avenue. Low-rise tenements housed workers and their families. The “Gangs of Youth” fought police and rival gangs.
In the 1860’s, The Landmark Tavern located at 626 11th Ave, citra 1868, stayed open during Prohibition. Late in the decade, piers were constructed north of 40th Street, and several industries were established along the railroad, “including coal yards, breweries, and a sawmill, along with factories producing drainpipes, carpet, and wood kindling. The neighborhood also contained an enormous live hog market, anticipating its future importance as a stockyard and meatpacking center.”
In the 1880’s, twelfth avenue was incomplete, but extensive filling occurred along the shoreline at this point, allowing piers to be built in the West 50s.
In the 1900’s, Carriage Houses were erected to house horses upstairs and carriages on the ground-floor. In addition, attention to the poverty and violence of the neighborhood by Jacob Riis and others led to civic improvements, including the opening of more parks like DeWitt Clinton Park. Also in the time period, a new, mainly African American community, called San Juan Hill, added theaters and nightclubs and spurred the development of ragtime music and jazz. It became NYC’s center of African-American life until it shifted to Harle in the 1910s and 1920s.
In the 1920’s, St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church, a parish of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at West 49th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, has served the theatre community since 1920, along with the Actors’ Temple, officially named Congregation Ezrath Israel, located at 339 West 47th Street, circa 1923. The Garment Wear Arcade, 18-story office building, circa 1927, spans through the block from 307 West 36th Street to 306 West 37th Streets. As well, the Film Center Building, a 13-story office building, catered to businesses involved in film, theatre, music and audio production and exploitation, at 630 Ninth Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets, circa 1928-29.
In the 1930s, Speakeasies run by gangsters contributed to the removal of Lincoln Tunnel construction leading to reduced numbers of tenements, which continued during the tunnel expansion in the 1940s and 1950s. As a result, the surface railroad tracks on 11th Avenue as well as the Ninth Avenue Elevated train tracks were removed. Afterwards, McGraw-Hill Building, held at 33 stories, located at 330 W. 42nd Street between 8th and 9th Avenues, circa 1931, hailed as New York’s first monument to International Style was constructed.
Post World War II, from the late 1940s onward, lower rent rates attracted new immigrants to Hell’s Kitchen, many from Puerto Rico, and the ensuing conflict was immortalized by the musical “West Side Story”(1957). High rates of violence, attributed to two generations of Irish gangsters, known as “the Westies.” up to the late 1980s.
In the 1949’s, The Port Authority Bus Terminal, at 625 Eighth Avenue between 40th Street and 42nd Street, opened to serve interstate bus travel. Construction for the Bus Terminal and ramps destroyed much of Hell’s Kitchen south of 41st Street
In the 1950’s, Lincoln Tunnel and Lincoln Tunnel access roads to connect New York City to New Jersey. By the end of this decade, developers of the area wanted a better image for the neighborhood, so the city planning committee decided to rename the neighborhood Clinton, named after former mayor and governor DeWitt Clinton. However, both names for the neighborhood continue to be used today.
In the 1970’s, The Javits Convention Center approved for the 44th Street site to replace piers 84 and 86. From Manhattan Plaza, to West 43rd Street between Ninth and 10th Avenues, a federally subsidized rental complex consisting of two 46-story towers, with 70% of the apartments set aside for discounted rent for those who worked in the arts, were credited with turning the neighborhood around. Lee Strasberg taught “method acting” at The Actors Studio on West 44th. Famous actors and entertainers resided in Hell’s Kitchen, including Burt Reynolds, Bob Hope, James Dean, Madonna, Jerry Seinfeld, Alicia Keys, and Sylvester Stallone.
In the 1980’s, Hotels, apartment buildings, and Madison Square Garden, built over the tracks west of Pennsylvania Station, and the Worldwide Plaza complex, constructed in 1989 at the former Madison Square Garden site, covering 49th and 50th Streets, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Later, in the late 1980s, many gang members were also imprisoned.
In the 1990’s, the cleanup of Times Square helped lead to the “upscaling” of Hell’s Kitchen.
Since 2000, retail, entertainment, and more than 100 restaurants occupy Ninth Avenue and Tenth Avenue, across the entire length of the neighborhood, and along the Hudson River, the Javits Convention Center occupies several blocks, and the Intrepid Air and Space Museum. Recently, the neighborhood has been undergoing gentrification as it becomes safer and more popular.
People need more, not less, community engagement, and more, not fewer, libraries to nourish readers and thinkers. Book Post is a grass-roots community lending library initiative- the brainchild of Ann Kjellberg, a local publishing professional, and Catherine Lafferty, a volunteer community gardener. The mission is to place small book shelters in New York City Parks, and other community-use spaces.
Architecture & Design NYC Little Free Library design team is composed of a volunteer corps of Architects and Interns sponsored by the NYC Department of Education Career and Technical Education (CTE), and Architecture Apprentices sponsored by the Success Via Apprenticeship (SVA) program. The design team is collaborating with Hell’s Kitchen Park stewards this summer to design two prototype Book Post NYC 2020 installations- one for adults, and one for children. The project site is Hell’s Kitchen Park in Manhattan, NYC. In keeping with the spirit of the initiative, the process is documented along the way to generate an ‘open source’ guidebook.
Architecture & Design NYC Little Free Library is a “bite-sized lending library service and an online collection offering resources focused on NYC’s legacy of Architecture & Design to adults and children to support learning and appreciation how architecture and design affects people in urban environments to which libraries are also vitally important.
