History

Hell's Kitchen (also known as Clinton) is a neighborhood of New York City. It is the area between 34th and 59th Streets, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River.

Originally the expression "Hell's Kitchen" referred to a rough neighborhood in South London. The term in reference to New York first appeared in print on September 22, 1881 when a New York Times reporter went to a police guide to get details of a multiple murder there. He referred to a particular tenement at 39th Street and 10th Avenue as "Hell's Kitchen", and said that the entire section was "probably the lowest and filthiest in the city". According to this version, 39th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues became known as Hell's Kitchen and the name was later expanded to the surrounding streets.

One version ascribes the name's origins to a German restaurant in the area known as Heil's Kitchen, after its proprietors. But the most common version traces it to the story of Dutch Fred The Cop, a veteran policeman, who with his rookie partner, was watching a small riot on West 39th Street near 10th Avenue. The rookie is supposed to have said, "This place is hell itself", to which Fred replied, "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen."

The name "Hell's Kitchen" might also be from an old saying from Ireland: "This place is hotter than Hell's Kitchen."

In recent years, the neighborhood has undergone gentrification. Partly as a result, the alternative name "Clinton" has gained in popularity. The name has long had some currency, however; the Chelsea Clinton News, covering this area and the adjoining Chelsea, has been published for decades.

Hell's Kitchen in Popular Entertainment

Hell's Kitchen is a popular slum setting within fiction:

• Newspaper mogul Gail Wynand in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead worked his way from poverty in Hell's Kitchen to great wealth.
• The Marvel Comics superhero Daredevil battles crime in Hell's Kitchen.
• "Hell's Kitchen" is the title of an instrumental song from Dream Theater's album Falling Into Infinity.
• Features in the work of Eugene O'Neill, such as the bar setting in The Iceman Cometh. O'Neill was known to have frequented bars in the area.
• The boys from Sleepers also come from Hell's Kitchen.
• Hell's Kitchen is the title of a 1939 film, featuring Ronald Reagan and members of the Dead End Kids.
• The neighborhood was the setting for West Side Story.
• Sergeant Max Greevey from the TV series Law & Order hailed from Hell's Kitchen.
• In the PC game Deus Ex, the protagonist JC Denton meets important characters and fights terrorists and UNATCO troops in 2052's Hell's Kitchen. This area is a dark slum, and all action here takes place at night; the game presents a dystopian future, and many areas are like that.

Other Meanings

• Hell's Kitchen is the name of an album by Maxim, a member of The Prodigy.
• Hell's Kitchen was also the name of a cookery-based reality show broadcast in the UK on ITV in 2004, featuring chef Gordon Ramsay and presented by Angus Deayton. The show, which ran nightly for two weeks, placed ten celebrities, including Edwina Currie, Abi Titmuss, Matt Goss, Belinda Carlisle, Al Murray, Dwain Chambers, Tommy Vance, James Dreyfus and Amanda Barrie in a specially constructed London restaurant kitchen, with the task of catering for a clientèle of famous people. A series of public elimination votes (as per Survivor or Big Brother) decided the winner, who was actress Jennifer Ellison.
• Hell's Kitchen is also a show on the German channel VIVA, which features mainly heavy metal music video clips.

External links

• Hell's Kitchen Online