Hell's Kitchen

Hell's Kitchen ...more than a neighborhood...it's a state of mind. From the slaughterhouses and breweries of the 1800s, the draft riots of 1863, the Fighting 69th of World War I, the home of New York's most dangerous criminals from the early tenement days to Prohibition to the Westies, Hell's Kitchen rose from the blood and fire of the poor dreaming their riotous dreams and searing the urban landscape with a wild, demanding spirit. The story of Hell's Kitchen can be told in many ways, and must be told in many ways: in poetry and fiction, in art and film, biographies, histories and photographs. It's not one block, and it is. It's not one area, because the sum total is greater than what can be seen in a certain space or any lifetime.