Hell’s Kitchen is rising in popularity and home prices

Joe Allen Restaurant

326 W. 46th St.

Spot your favorite Broadway stars before and after shows here, as bartender Dan Conway estimated that 75% of the employees are performers. Joan Rivers used to frequent here for the banana cream pie.

Joeallenrestaurant.com

Underwest Donuts

638 W. 47th St.

Located in a carwash alongside the West Side Highway, this shop sells cake donuts in innovative flavors, like espresso bean and mulled cider.

Underwestdonuts.com

Secco

355 W. 46th St.

This family-oriented Italian restaurant offers unlimited refills of three fresh pastas made in-house for $24.95.

Becco-nyc.com
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Photo Credit: Yeong-Ung Yang

Lansdowne Road

599 10th Ave.

Head to this Irish pub to catch a game on its big screen TVs or to try something off the whiskey menu.

Lansdowneroadnyc.com

Birdland Jazz Club

315 W. 44th St.

A Beat Generation favorite that’s still popular among midtown executives.

Birdlandjazz.com

Beer Culture

328 W. 45th St.

Tap into some of the latest microbrews that are all the rage in NYC these days.

Beerculture.nyc
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Photo Credit: iStock

Terminal 5

610 W. 56th St.

Catch a big act like The Neighborhood on June 15 or At The Drive-In on June 17 (sold out) at this multi-level event space that fits 3,000 people.

Terminal5nyc.com

The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum

Pier 86, West 46th Street and 12th Avenue

This former U.S. Navy ship is a popular tourist attraction, but for New Yorkers, it also offers Operation Slumber, a series of overnight sleepovers for families and youth groups.

Intrepidmuseum.org

Clinton Community Garden

434 W. 48th St.

A community garden built by Hell’s Kitchen residents in a vacant lot in 1978. It has a six-year waitlist for one of its 106 plots, but the park in the front is open to the public.

Clintongarden.org
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Photo Credit: Yeong-Ung Yang

Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market

519 Ninth Ave.

Open on Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with everything from vintage Chanel shoes to home decor. Cash only.

Annexmarkets.com

Couture du Jour

349 W. 44th St.

This vintage shop’s proximity to the Theater District means shoppers might find a one-of-a-kind piece from a Broadway costume designer.

Couturedujournyc.com

Delphinium Card and Gift

353 W. 47th St.

Founded by three former theater actors, this cute stationery and craft store is curated for all your Pinterest-worthy projects.

Delphiniumhome.com
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Photo Credit: Yeong-Ung Yang

Trains:

A, C, E to 34th Street-Penn Station and 42nd Street-Port Authority

C, E to 50th Street

7 to 34th Street-Hudson Yards

Buses:

M11, M12, M20, M31, M34A, M42, M50, M57, M104
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Photo Credit: Yeong-Ung Yang

Median recorded sales price: $1,002,537

Number of units on market: 825

Median rent price: $3,660

Number of rentals on market: 3,328

(Source: StreetEasy)

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Photo Credit: Yeong-Ung Yang

While Hell’s Kitchen is becoming known for its wave of new developments, not all the area’s new residences are changing the Manhattan skyline.

The Stella Tower at 25 W. 50th St., designed by art deco architect Ralph Walker in 1927 for the New York Telephone Company and converted into condos last year, still houses a telephone company, Verizon, below the 10th floor.

Above it are 51 boutique condos with starting prices at $4 million.

“Stella Tower is right across the street from me, and it’s gorgeous,” actor, producer and 26-year resident Porter Pickard said. “That’s adaptive use of an existing building, which I’m a big proponent of. They didn’t just knock it down to build something taller.”

For those on a slightly tighter budget who want to avoid the skyscrapers, another new residence of limited height is the seven-story, 55-unit Nine52 at 416 W. 52nd St. — the former home of St. Vincent’s Hospital — where prices start at $1.1 million.
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Photo Credit: Yeong-Ung Yang

Hell’s Kitchen is no longer one of Manhattan’s best kept secrets.

Instead, the midtown west neighborhood is becoming the next Chelsea, with new luxury developments and trendy venues amidst the area’s remaining mom and pop shops, according to area experts.

Though the fresh highrises along the Hudson River are changing the skyline, other parts of Hell’s Kitchen still boast the same old red brick low-rises for which the area is known.

From West 41st Street to West 56th Street between Eighth and 10th avenues, buildings are limited to a height of 66 feet — about seven stories tall — under a city zoning law, which preserves the Hell’s Kitchen from the days when it was home to mostly working-class immigrants and theater performers.

Lily Fable, who owns the fifth-generation Poseidon Bakery — a favorite of Alec Baldwin — on Ninth Avenue, found the neighborhood was a good place to raise her son.

“Because we’re lucky enough to own the entire building, we’ve always lived in the apartments above the bakery and gotten to know all of our neighbors and visitors,” she said.

Today, Ninth Avenue is often packed with local food enthusiasts and tourists. However, 10th and 11th avenues, which are a hike from the local subway stations, still have much less foot traffic.

“My front windows face Ninth Avenue,” said Porter Pickard, an actor and 26-year resident. “Not only is it filled with restaurants and bars, but the sidewalks on Ninth Avenue are probably 10 to 12 feet narrower than they are on 10th Avenue. So you’ve got all of this foot traffic, which is shoved into this tiny narrow corridor on either side of the street. So yeah, it gets noisy.”

Despite its popularity, not all the shops on Ninth Avenue have survived, according to Bobby Esposito, the third-generation owner of Esposito Meat Market, which opened at Ninth and 38th Street in 1932.

“A lot of the other family shops are gone,” he said. “But we’re still here, grinding sausages every day.”

Hell’s Kitchen is becoming more like neighboring Chelsea these days, according Christopher Ritchey, a real estate salesperson with Compass.

“People are getting priced out of Chelsea and moving here,” he said. “It’s convenient — you can walk to Central Park or see a Broadway show or walk down to the West Village for drinks.”

According to real estate listings site StreetEasy, the median rental price in Hell’s Kitchen in 2015 was $3,660, and the median sales price was $1,002,537. The area was just slightly less expensive than Chelsea, where the median sales price in 2015 was $1,150,000 and the median rent was $3,750.

One tip for prospective Hell’s Kitchen renters is that the walk-ups toward Eighth Avenue often have studio apartments for under $2,000 a month, which tend to appeal to young professionals, Ritchey noted.

To entice residents to the far-flung regions of 10th and 11th avenues, the new highrises come with luxury amenities and offer shuttle buses to subway stations.

Gotham West, a 32-story residence at West 45th Street and 11th Avenue that opened in 2013, created the Gotham West Market on its ground floor for its residents to shop in. Its other offerings include a health center with daily yoga classes and a curated art gallery.

The new 71-story Sky, which opened last year at West 42nd and 11th, includes spas for people and their pets, an NBA regulation-sized basketball court and a lap pool, among other amenities.

Developer Douglas Durst’s new pyramidal building, Via 57 West, which is currently under construction between 11th and 12th avenues, will feature numerous social and health-related activities, along with various forms of greenspace.

The closest subways to these buildings are over on Eighth Avenue, and “it would have been nice to have a 7 train extension,” admitted Dan McLaughlin, a six-year resident and owner of The Pony Bar, Kiabacca Bar and Lansdowne Road, all on 10th Avenue, referring to a plan to build an extension to West 41st Street and 10th Avenue that was dropped in 2007.

But living in Hell’s Kitchen makes the periodic long walks worth it, residents said.

“I’ve considered leaving Hell’s Kitchen, but I just can’t bring myself to do it,” said Andy Padian, a 26-year resident. “From getting coffee from Sergio at Sugar Deli [on Ninth Avenue] to the friends I’ve made at the [Clinton] Community Garden, I like my small and intimate community here.”

Find it:

Hell’s Kitchen is bordered by West 34th Street to the south and West 57th Street to the north. It sits between Eighth Avenue to the east and the Hudson River to the west.