34th Street Streetscape Program

The 34th Street district takes in the southern parts of Hell’s Kitchen and the Garment District and the northern part of Chelsea, and includes the Empire State Building to the east and Penn Station/Madison Square Garden to the west—in all, approximately 36 million square feet (3.4 million m²) of commercial space. At its decades-long peak, the area was famed as a shopping destination for New Yorkers and visitors. For much of the 20th century, however, it was Manhattan’s backyard, where land uses that New Yorkers would not countenance in their frontyard were allowed. Even as the city rebounded from near bankruptcy and the garbage strikes of the early 1980s, the blocks west of Seventh Avenue, beset by the familiar cycle of retail flight and urban decline, lagged behind. People still came to the area—midtown workers arriving at Penn Station, drivers using Lincoln Tunnel, tourists visiting the Empire State Building, people attending events at Madison Square Garden—but most left as fast as they could.