West 35 St, Clinton / Hells Kitchen

35th in Hell's Kitchen starts off at the Javitz Center -- which is a heinously ugly convention center building where they seem to be having trade shows every single day of the week. This place can be the bane of your existence if you happen to get caught in traffic when one of the shows is just getting out so I try to avoid it. The rest of the street up until 9th Avenue is taken up by equally unimpressive buildings that are all pretty much dedicated to non-profit things (women's housing, health, etc). So, unless you need any sort of non-profit work or do trade shows, you can pretty much pretend that this stretch of 35th doesn't exist. There's no reason to be here.
The block at 9th houses the Manhattan Center and the Hotel New Yorker on the south side. The Manhattan Center is is the back entrance to the Hammerstein Opera House where they hold movies, conventions, etc. It's not an impressive building but anything connected to the opera house has a little bit of cool to it, in my opinion. The Hotel New Yorker was the largest hotel in New York when it opened in the '30's. It's a really cool looking building that feel into massive disrepair and looked like a crack hotel until a church bought it a few years ago. It's a shame that it's no longer a hotel because if it were redone, it would be so cool. I feel like it would be a sort of Great Gatsby kind of throwback, but sadly, that will probably never be. Across the street is the midtown precinct of the NYPD. Nothing like a having a bunch of cops around to ensure your opera exit is well guarded, I guess. It's nice to have a precinct so close because of safety but it definitely does nothing for the energy or aesthetic of a neighborhood, that's for sure.
Like most of Hell's Kitchen, I wouldn't live on 35th. There are too many people during the day and there's no one around at night. I'm guessing because there's not much to do here and no neighborhood kind of vibe. It's a passover street as far as I'm concerned.