Hell's Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space: Class Struggle

Hell's Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space: Class Struggle and Progressive Reform in New York City, 1894-1914
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Hellâ€™s Kitchen is among Manhattanâ€™s most storied and studied neighborhoods. A working-class district situated next to the West Sideâ€™s middle- and upper-class residential districts, it has long attracted the focus of artists and urban planners, writers and reformers. Now, Joseph Varga takes us on a tour of Hellâ€™s Kitchen with an eye toward what we usually take for granted: space, and, particularly, how urban spaces are produced, controlled, and contested by different class and political forces. Varga examines events and locations in a crucial period in the formation of the Hellâ€™s Kitchen neighborhood, the Progressive Era, and describes how reformers sought to shape the behavior and experiences of its inhabitants by manipulating the built environment. But those inhabitants had plans of their own, and thus ensued a struggle over the very spacesâ€”public and private, commercial and personalâ€”in which they lived. Varga insightfully considers the interactions between human actors, the built environment, and the natural landscape, and suggests how the production of and struggle over space influence what we think and how we live. In the process, he raises incisive questions about the meaning of community, citizenship, and democracy itself.

Hell's Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space: Class Struggle and Progressive Reform in New York City, 1894-1914