Portrait of a Former Arab-American Community in Lower Manhattan

At the pastry counter in a Syrian restaurant, about 1910, a server cuts a slice of baklava. (Library of Congress)

Where cars now snake into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel was once the epicenter of the country's earliest and largest Arab-American communities.

In cafes along Washington Street, from Battery Place to Liberty Street, local men recreated the world they left behind, playing backgammon, drinking thick Turkish coffee and smoking water pipes. Bakeries turned out familiar desserts—baklava thick with pistachio nuts and bathed in syrup, and halava, made from ground sesame seed laden with honey; groceries were redolent of cardamom and other spices.

The immigrants who settled here, most from Syria and Lebanon, then under Ottoman rule, squeezed into tiny apartments above the stores and in the tenements along the side streets. According to a United States Immigration Commission Report of 1911, “The Syrians in lower Manhattan lived in the most cramped quarters of any other ethnic group. Almost 40% of families lived in two-room apartments."

A visual portrait of this lost neighborhood, known as Little Syria, is now on display at the New York City Department of Records and Information Services at 31 Chambers St. (Just seeing the remarkable lobby of this 1907 Beaux Arts building makes a visit worthwhile.) "Little Syria, NY: An Immigrant Community’s Life and Legacy," produced by the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, MI, uses photographs, artifacts, maps, a video, musical recordings and numerous other everyday items, to reveal a community that successfully found a place in American life while keeping alive its own traditions.

The community was a tightly knit one. Largely Christian, it built its own churches (the first opened in 1890 in a rented hall at 127 Washington St.) and organized fraternal clubs (The Damascus Fraternity, the Aleppo Social Club, the Beyrouth (Beirut) Young Men’s Society, to name a few). The Syrian Women’s Union, founded in 1896, helped open a daycare center for the children of peddlers. Other local organizations provided schooling and English classes to the newcomers.

They also started lively newspapers and literary journals that published the first English-language works of emerging Arab writers, including Kahlil Gibran, author of "The Prophet."

Like other immigrant groups, the newcomers brought with them their entrepreneurial talents.

Many had worked in Lebanon’s silk industry and by 1908, there were more than 70 textile businesses in Little Syria, making or selling silk dresses, table linens, handkerchiefs, napkins and lingerie. Twenty years later, the number doubled. (Bardwil Bros., the country's largest linen company, opened in Little Syria in 1900.)

A knack for the food business soon emerged. Two families from Aleppo, known for its pistachios, became the biggest importers of nuts. Kalil’s Restaurant began at 61 Cortlandt St. in Little Syria, but expanded to Park Place, near City Hall, with room for 1,000 diners. And the popular Sahadi's, now on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, opened its doors in 1898 on Washington Street.

But for nearly all of the residents of Little Syria, it was hard work that defined their lives. Many started out as peddlers, often fanning out across the country. "The same day they arrived in America," the exhibit notes, "peddlers would make a deal with a wholesale merchant to sell laces, linens and trinkets from the Holy Land."

The highly restrictive immigration quotas that were put in effect in 1924 cut the annual number of Syrians allowed to enter the U.S. to a mere 100. By the 1930s, the Arab-American population living in Little Syria was dwindling, and the death knell for the neighborhood came in the form of an order of eminent domain from the city. Lower Washington Street was almost completely destroyed to allow the soon-to-be-constructed entrance ramps to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Later, northern Little Syria was bulldozed to make room for the construction of the World Trade Center.

The story of Little Syria is not over. Thanks to local activists, the former St. George’s Melkite Church at 103 Washington Street became a designated New York City landmark in 2009. The Friends of the Lower West Side and Save Washington Street, have also campaigned for landmark status for the two buildings adjacent to the church—a community center and a tenement building.

"Together these three buildings represent family, faith and social work—a respectable slice of what constitutes a neighborhood," the show concludes. "They are the last reminders of the once vibrant Little Syria community on Washington Street."

"Little Syria, NY: An Immigrant Community’s Life and Legacy " is at the The NYC Department of Records and Information Services, 31 Chambers St., to Sept. 16. Hours are 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The show will then be at Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration Ellis Island, from Oct. 1, 2016 to Jan. 9, 2017, followed by the Metropolitan College of New York, 60 West St., Jan. 20 to March 24. For more details on the exhibition go to www.arabamericanmuseum.org/ [1]LS.