Tenderloin

Tenderloin was the neighborhood of the West Side of Manhattan between W. 14th Street and W. 57th Street, from the mid 1800s to the 1920s. It was primarily an African-American neighborhood. With the construction of Penn Station, and new, cheaper housing in Harlem, much of the Tenderloin's Black community moved uptown by 1920.

It became an industrial area, but since the 1970s, with gentrification, the old Tenderloin's Chelsea, Hells Kitchen, and Clinton sections became increasingly residential again.

A neighborhood by the same name also exists in San Francisco, immediately west of Union Square; in the early Twentieth Century it was known as a place of cheap amusements, and after the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages throughout the United States, it became notorious for its concentartion of illegal bars, or "speakeasies."

One legend has it that the neighborhood earned its name from the words of a local police captain, who was overheard saying that when he was assigned to another part of town, he could only afford to eat chuck steak on the salary he was earning, but after he was transferred to this neighborhood he was making so much money on the side soliciting bribes that now he could eat tenderloin instead. Whether this anecdote is factual or not, the name for the neighborhood has stuck ever since; for that matter, its general character hasn't changed much either, since it is noted today for its ramshackle housing, easy availability of illegal drugs, and rampant prostitution.