Hell's Kitchen needs a new name

When asked recently by a buyer if he was in Hell's Kitchen or Clinton the broker replied....which makes you more comfortable?

The broker's answer was both sly and accurate, because both names — one rough-and-tumble, the other resolutely respectable — are used by the local community board to define the same area west of Eighth Avenue, from 59th Street to the mid-30s. Hell’s Kitchen, the identity favored by longtime residents, dates to the 1800s, when the neighborhood began its century-plus run as a hotbed of gang violence and squalor. The name Clinton was introduced in 1959 in an attempt to distance the area from that notoriety, which was well deserved as late as the 1980s.

But a funny thing happened on the way to gentrification. As memories of street crime have receded, and as luxury developments have risen, the name Hell’s Kitchen has acquired a kind of gritty cachet. Trendy restaurants on Ninth Avenue incorporate “HK” or “Hell’s Kitchen” into their names, and some developments use Hell’s Kitchen’s perceived edginess as a sales tool. “You don’t need a weather report to remind you: Hell’s Kitchen is sizzling,” declares the site for the 505, a sleek condominium on 47th Street. By contrast, marketing for the Thorndale, a condo conversion of a 1905 carriage house on 45th Street, describes the area as Clinton.

So, where do you want to live? Clinton or Hell's Kitchen? Maybe its time for a new name....