New York Street Was Referred to as "Little Syria".. In 1946

Posted on by Mustapha

The New York Times digs up a forgotten part of New York’s rich history, not too far from the “ground zero mosque” location:

Washington Street was “an enclave in the New World where Arabs first peddled goods, worked in sweatshops, lived in tenements and hung their own signs on stores,” [...] All but lost to living memory and forgotten in the current controversy, Washington Street was the “heart of New York’s Arab world, [...] it is worth recalling the old sights and sounds and smells of Washington Street as a reminder that in New York — a city as densely layered as baklava — no one has a definitive claim on any part of town, and history can turn up some unexpected people in surprising places.

Very neat.. Make sure you check out the painting in the top of the article.

7 Responses to New York Street Was Referred to as "Little Syria".. In 1946

  2. Amen Dar,

    I see this is your first comment here, thanks for that :) ,

    by the way, you can add a picture to your comments here and in other blogs by going to gravatar.com

  3. This story was covered before from a different angle. See the NYT article from 3 July 2008 at:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/nyregion/03trade.html?pagewanted=all

    Specifically:

    “Mr. Pitsikalis said his family is linked to the origins of St. Nicholas Church. In 1919, five families, including his grandfather, raised $25,000 to buy a tavern at 155 Cedar Street and converted it into a church. Before that, the congregation had conducted services in a hotel owned by his grandfather at Greenwich and Liberty Streets, where the former Deutsche Bank building is now being demolished. It was a neighborhood of Lebanese, Greek and Syrian immigrants, filled with small businesses and produce stands.”

  4. Wow you see this is just a reminder of the diversity here in the states especially in the bigger cities, they are full of arabs and muslims, but we never speak for ourselves or define ourselves, so others define us as terrorists

  7. I LOVE this NYTimes piece ih, thanks for linking it. It is amazing that NOT A SINGLE time was the word \Arab\ and Arab identity uttered. Semantics do matter, and apparently, back in 1903, those Lebanese (and yes, they were mainly Lebanese) Christian immigrants, descendants of the escapees of the massacres of the 1860s in Mount-Lebanon, Rashayya/Reshmayya, and Damascus, NEVER spoke in Arabic/Arabist terms. The idea of Arabness and Arab identity had not yet made it into the mainstream literature on identity and nationalism; Arabness was certainly not part of the memory, perception, and vocabulary of those immigrants. Those 1903 residents of Washington Street were trying to forge a new (non-Turkish, non-Ottoman) existence and identity for themselves and their persecuted countrymen. \Syria\ had been a natural appellation at the time (invented by Butros al-Bustani in 1860, to refer to the Christians of Lebanon, long before the term got hijacked by \Syrian\ Arabists.)

    Those Lebanese and Syrian Christians’ narratives have, of course, been expropriated by an Arabist worldview in the more recent NYTimes article on \little Syria\, sacrificing historical accuracy for the sake of political expediency. But, n’est-ce pas que History is a bitch, and always comes back to haunt us! This 1903 NYTimes article is a priceless piece of Middle Eastern cultural history and history of ideas.