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.