City zoning has held most of the neighborhood to six stories since 1974, under the Special Clinton District. The city's 1969 plan for the West Side wanted 25,000 apartments and a convention center. The people living here fought it off. The walk-ups they were protecting are still standing a block west of the towers.
is the commercial one. Restaurants and delis run most of the way up it, under walk-ups with fire escapes on the front. Trucks unload in the roadway most of the morning.
is wider and has less on it. The blocks west of it ran to the piers, which lost their work when containerized shipping arrived at the end of the 1970s. The Intrepid is moored at , and its flight deck looks back over the low roofs.
The approaches in the 1930s and the Port Authority ramps after 1950 took out most of the blocks south of West 41st Street. went up on the edge of that in 1977, subsidized housing where seventy percent of tenants work in the performing arts.
Theatre is what a lot of people here do. Two former churches on have been given over to it, New Dramatists in the Gothic Revival one of the 1880s and the Actors Studio in the Greek Revival one of the 1850s.
is the eastern edge. The firehouse at number 782 is Engine 54, Ladder 4 and Battalion 9. It lost fifteen members on 11 September 2001, and the mural beside the door names them.
