#186 Hell's Kitchen: New York's Wild West

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2015

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hell’s Kitchen, on the far west side of Midtown Manhattan, is a neighborhood of many secrets. The unique history of this working class district veers into many tales of New York's criminal underworld and violent riots which have shaken the streets for over 150 years.This sprawling tenement area was home to some of the most notorious slums in the city, and sinister streets like Battle Row were frequent sites of vice and unrest. The streets were ruled by such gangs as the Gophers and the Westies, leaving their bloody fingerprints in subtle ways today in gentrified building which at one time contained the most infamous speakeasies and taverns.We break down this breathtaking history and try to get to the real reason for its unusual name. And we have a devil of a good time uncovering it! www.boweryboyshistory.comWe are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor. We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far. And the best is yet to come! Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	Episode 186 of The Bowery Boys, Hell's Kitchen, The Wild West.
0:05.4	Hey, it's The Bowery Boys.
0:07.0	Hey.
0:08.2	Support for The Bowery Boys is provided by our listeners.
0:11.7	Join us for as little as a dollar a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowery Boys.
0:20.8	Hi there, welcome to The Bowery Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:23.4	And this is Tom Myers.
0:24.7	Today we're taking a trip to Midtown Manhattan's far west side.
0:29.7	To that neighborhood with a rather demonic name, Hell's Kitchen.
0:34.4	Despite the demonic nature of the neighborhood, it is today one of our favorite neighborhoods.
0:39.9	We find ourselves frequenting this district's small restaurants and bars.
0:45.7	It lies just west of the theater district and in the middle of Midtown West.
0:50.4	Yet it was once one of New York's toughest and roughest neighborhoods.
0:55.0	For most of its existence, or at least for almost 150 years, it was a working class neighborhood.
1:01.4	Well, it certainly is one of the city's most colorful neighborhoods.
1:04.4	And today's story will take us through a cast of characters and gangsters and
1:09.2	dust-ups that you might expect to read about in a dime store novel.
1:13.2	Now, I should just throw this out there. We understand that this was a neighborhood where people
1:18.3	have lived normal lives that many people have fond memories of growing up.
1:23.0	But we're going to focus on the riots, the gangs, the violence, the surliness.
1:28.2	And we're going to explore the various theories surrounding the origins of the neighborhood's name.
1:34.4	Where did it get this name, Hell's Kitchen?
	...

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