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MITOWN WEST, THEATER DISTRICT, CLINTON
From 30th to 59th Streets and west of Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River, Midtown West offers everything from performing arts to culinary arts along with a classic and memorable skyline. Part of that skyline will change dramatically with the completion of the new AOL Warner Center at Columbus Circle in 2003. Billed as a genuine destination for locals and tourists with world-class shopping (Cartier, for one), award-winning restaurants, movie theaters, a 5-star hotel, 200 luxury apartments and a huge concert hall for Jazz at Lincoln Center - this complex will undoubtedly define the neighborhood upon its completion.
Times Square, hot chocolate at the Plaza's Palm Court, ice skating in Central Park, Streisand and Redford in The Way We Were, Rockefeller Center, Carnegie Hall and all Broadway. A gazillion movie theaters within walking distance and clothes shopping as an art form. The best grocery shopping is on Ninth Avenue and there's a giant Food Emporium on Eighth Avenue.
Today's Clinton was formerly referred to as Hell's Kitchen, once the city's dirtiest, most crime-ridden areas. Despite the efforts of police and the area's respectable citizens, its reputation stuck throughout the 20th century. But no matter what you call it, the area from West 34th Street to West 59th Street, between 5th Avenue and the Hudson River, has shed all negative illusions and is a fine example of a successful ethnically mixed neighborhood. The name Clinton came from DeWitt Clinton, a nephew of first New York State governor George Clinton, who owned the farmland back in the late 18th century. Local residents and many New Yorkers can appreciate the more sophisticated name, but still prefer Hell's Kitchen, knowing full well that it's far from hellish anymore.
Made up of about 20 streets lined with attractive brick row houses, lush trees and garden boxes, Clinton is home to a diversity of residents ranging from descendants of European immigrants of previous centuries to the more recent Latin American and Asian transition. Its homogenous housing, predominantly five- or six-story walkups, is famous throughout Manhattan, with different features apparent inside each apartment. Newly renovated buildings, of course, have much more bathroom, kitchen and closet space than older designs. Loyal to their neighborhood, Clinton residents are quite active in local politics and in area preservation. The Special District Clinton Coalition has also been surprisingly effective in preventing large-scale development to impede the community's quaint appeal. People tend to live in Clinton for a lifetime, secure with the fact that they have discovered a raw and valuable gem in Manhattan.
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