Although Midtown next door is growing ever taller, Hell’s Kitchen has preserved much of its low-slung look. Special zoning put in place in the 1970s prevents most buildings from rising more than seven stories on side streets, and more than 15 on the avenues, including Ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th. So to put up lucrative skyscrapers, developers generally went elsewhere. As a result, many Hell’s Kitchen blocks have a 19th-century vibe. Trees shade intact four-story rowhouses, with corbels bracketing their roofs, and facades the color of chocolate frosting.

Along other blocks, the skyline is at ground level: For decades, Hell’s Kitchen was known, for better or worse, for its parking lots, like the one on 10th Avenue, from 47th to 48th Street, that today is home to Hell’s Kitchen Park. Whatever the lots favored by Broadway-bound suburbanites in the past, chances are they have been taken over by new construction.

A sizable part of the neighborhood is made up of affordable housing, some resulting from the rehabilitation of abandoned rowhouses. Among the large public projects are Manhattan Plaza on 42nd Street and Ninth Avenue, largely inhabited by artists; and Clinton Manor, on 51st Street near 10th Avenue, which has 241 apartments for Section 8 tenants. Some developers included below-market units in exchange for being allowed to erect bigger buildings. Retailers have taken an interest, too. Shops are planned for the Windermere, a shuttered 1881 apartment building at 9th Avenue and 57th that may, after years of delays, become a 200-room boutique hotel, said Mark Tress, the New Jersey developer who has owned it since 2009.

These days, Ninth and 10th Avenues are a thicket of bars and restaurants, many of which cater to a gay clientele. On sidewalks where crack was once dealt openly, cafe tables are crammed in front of plate-glass windows or wide-open French doors. This month Gotham West Market, a supercharged food court at Gotham West, will open with eight mini-restaurants.

All those beer taps may turn the area into a party zone on some evenings, but neighbors seem to understand that a certain amount of carousing comes with the territory.