Born and raised at 520 W47th Street, Barbara Moresco’s life took a dramatic turn when her husband moved to Hollywood in search of work as an actor. She still visits the neighborhood to see friends and family — and Hell’s Kitchen has a special place in her heart. This is Barbara’s West Side Story.
Barbara was born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen during the rise of the Westies, a notorious Irish mob located in the neighborhood. Photo: Catie Savage
So what’s your New York story? Born here, or just arrived?
I was born and raised at 520 W47th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. My whole world was these blocks. My parents and my husband’s parents knew each other, and everyone on the street felt like family — Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican, all looking out for one another.
I met my husband, Bobby, on our block when we were about 13. He thought it’d be cute to shove me under the open fire hydrant — the “pump” — and somehow that counted as flirting back then. We went steady for a week, broke up, stayed friends and eventually found our way back to each other years later. Growing up here meant stoops, tenements with bathtubs in the kitchen and a neighborhood you didn’t have to lock your door in because everyone already knew your business.
Barbara with her grandmother (left) and mother (right). Photo supplied.
My mother must have seen what was coming with the neighborhood — especially with the Westies starting to take over — and she moved us out of Hell’s Kitchen and down to the projects on W18th Street (NYCHA Fulton Houses). My sister and I thought it was the end of the world. We cried, refused to go outside except for school, and begged her every day to let us come back uptown. We just didn’t fit in — or at least we thought we didn’t. Meanwhile, my brother adjusted right away. He walked outside, found a basketball game, and that was it — he was in. My mother told us no more running back to W47th Street, but after enough complaining, she finally gave us a quarter to take the bus uptown so we could be with our friends again. At the time, I swore my life was over — now I laugh about it.
In 1974, Bobby and I got married at Sacred Heart of Jesus Church on W51st Street. After the wedding, we moved into his apartment at 696 10th Avenue. I didn’t want to live there at first — I kept saying I wanted to move somewhere with a tree on the street, maybe Queens — but Bobby wouldn’t leave Hell’s Kitchen. It still makes me laugh that he refused to go to Queens, but a few years later he was ready to fly across the country to Hollywood. That building at 696 was pure old Hell’s Kitchen — his grandmother lived there, his cousin was upstairs, his mother was right around the corner. Privacy didn’t really exist.
Barbara and Bobby’s wedding photo from 1974. Photo supplied.
We tried to get a little distance and moved to an apartment at W54th and 11th Avenue, in what was then one of the “new” buildings — Clinton Towers. Back then, nobody wanted to go as far as 11th Avenue, so I thought we’d finally have our own space. But slowly, the whole family migrated down there too — brothers, cousins, even his mother. It was noisy, crowded and full of people on every floor who knew every bit of your business. But it was ours — our first home together, in the neighborhood that never really let us go.
Bobby was always the tough guy on 10th Avenue — the last person you’d expect to sneak off to an acting class. One night when we were about 19, he disappeared and his cousin and I couldn’t figure out where he went. He came back hours later and finally admitted, “If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone — I went to an acting class.” I thought he was joking. The roughest guy in the neighborhood secretly wanted to be an actor. He begged me not to say a word to anyone.
Barbara and Bobby in 1973 before getting married and in 1975 with their first child, Amanda. Photos supplied.
Eventually he got serious about it, and after one too many nights out drinking, he told me he was leaving for Hollywood for pilot season. I didn’t even know what that meant — I thought it had to do with airplanes. He packed a bag, got on a plane, and landed in California with no plan, no job and barely any money. He wound up asking a stranger named Sam — the landlord of a furnished building — if he could rent an apartment with no money. And somehow, it worked. Sam gave him a job as a security guard and a place to live. Next thing I knew, he was calling me saying, “I got a job, I got an apartment — you coming or what?”
At first I told him no — not unless he was serious and settled. But after a while I packed up our daughter and joined him in California. Life out there wasn’t glamorous. We were broke most of the time, selling our clothes and jeans just to get by. Bobby worked whatever jobs he could — construction, bartending, security — and kept acting on the side, running little theater groups and performing in churches. He never became a Hollywood star for acting, but won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2006 for the movie Crash, which also won Best Picture and Achievement in Editing.
Barbara’s husband Bobby during the filming of Block by Block with Colin Quinn. Photo: Catie Savage
What was your first job? What do you do now?
My first real job was at a keypunch brokerage firm on Wall Street. I’d take the train downtown and work those giant early computers, punching cards all day. I ended up spending my whole career in the computer industry — IBM, Digital, teaching software in the World Trade Center — long before anyone knew what “tech” meant. I even worked in computers in California for a while. Now I’m retired, and I spend my time with my family and grandkids. I don’t miss the early morning commutes or office life — I did my years, and now I get to enjoy the good stuff.
What’s your favorite New York minute (or moment) so far?
One of my favorite memories is from Holy Cross School on W43rd Street. Every year the priest, Father McCaffrey — a saint of a man (and namesake of McCaffrey Playground) — would rent a boat just for the school. We’d leave from the pier on 42nd Street and sail up to Bear Mountain for the day. No parents, just kids, nuns, sunshine, sandwiches and the Hudson River. It felt like magic — like the whole world was ours, even if only for a day.
Share with us why you love Hell’s Kitchen.
Hell’s Kitchen was my playground. We hung out on 51st and 10th Avenue, at Mimi’s Pizza, the PAL, and Mother M’s — a pharmacy with a lunch counter where everyone left their baby carriages out front without worry. Nights were basketball games, dances, sitting on stoops and knowing exactly which mother would yell at you first if you stayed out past dark. It was rough sometimes, sure, but it was a real neighborhood — full of loud voices, big families and people who would give you the shirt off their back before asking your name.
Barbara pointing to one of her old haunts on 10th Avenue and W51st Street. Photo: Catie Savage
What’s your superpower or hidden talent?
Raising my two daughters. Through all the chaos — moving across the country, coming back, family drama, neighborhood changes — they became strong, loving women and wonderful mothers themselves. If I did nothing else right, I did that.
What else should we know about you?
Bobby and I moved north of the city to Rockland County when we left California to be closer to our children and grandchildren, but he comes back every Thursday to teach at his Acting Gym on W45th Street. My sister still lives at 747 10th Avenue and I come back to the neighborhood every now and then to visit friends and family.
I recently wrote a book about it all — From Hell’s Kitchen to the City of Angels — growing up here, falling in love, moving to California, coming back, and watching this neighborhood change again and again. It’s part love letter, part survival story and very much Hell’s Kitchen. You can pick up a copy here.
Barbara’s book, From Hell’s Kitchen to the City of Angels, details her life on the east and west coasts. Image supplied.
Barbara’s Favorite Hell’s Kitchen Places
AMT Theater — 354 W45th St (bw 8/9th Ave)
My husband Bobby runs this theater company, The Actor’s Gym, there every Thursday.
Hudsonview Terrace — 747 10th Ave (bw W50/51st St)
Visiting my sister and my friend Mary Daly, who both still live there, and running into people I’ve known forever.
DeWitt Clinton Park — 11th Ave (bw W52/54th St)
We always called it 52nd Street Park — so many memories growing up there.
Barbara at DeWitt Clinton Park on 11th Avenue between W52nd and W54th Streets. Photo: Catie Savage
Gossip — 733 9th Ave (bw W49/50th St)
Good food and a nice cozy atmosphere to meet up with friends.
Clinton Towers — 790 11th Ave (bw W54/55th St)
We moved there when we first married. The first high-rise for the neighborhood. We were living in a tenement with a bathtub in the kitchen when we applied for an apartment at Clinton Towers and were accepted.
Bathtubs in the kitchen can still be found in some old Hell’s Kitchen tenements, like the one on W45th Street. Photo: Molly Stromoski for NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development
The Old Madison Square Garden — 8th Ave (bw W49/50th St)
Iceland was a part of it and every Sunday the whole neighborhood would be there ice-skating all afternoon. There was a little cafeteria that allowed us to rest and have a bite to eat — miss that.
9th Avenue Food Festival — 9th Ave (bw W42/57th St)
The food festival started in the 70s and every year it is where all the old West Siders would meet. My girls have the same good memories of the festival.
Ninth Avenue International Food Festival in the 1970s extended below W42nd Street. Photo: Lili Fable collection
You can grab a copy of Barbara’s book, From Hell’s Kitchen to the City of Angels, here. If you know someone who would make a great West Side Story (or you would like to nominate yourself), please fill in this form — w42st.info/WSSnominations.
You can check out more West Side Stories and reader recommendations on W42ST’s Hell’s Kitchen Local App.