<Excerpt from New York Offbeat Walks: Hell’s Kitchen> On the right, you pass West 39th Street, which—between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues—was once as a notorious slum known as “Battle Row.” Long before the Westies, the 500-strong Irish American Gophers gang controlled the area from the 1890s until around 1910, finding rich pickings by stealing from the nearby train yards and ... Read More »