Little Syria: New York City preservationists fight for remains of historic cultural hub
Little Syria, once sprawling across the west side of lower Manhattan, was for decades the center of the city’s first Middle Eastern community. Starting in the 1830s, Arab immigrants established import and export businesses along the New York City harbor.
New York’s Little Syria joined the likes of Paris, Cairo and Beirut in becoming a cultural hub, according to Fine. By the early 1900s, Syrian Americans had created more than 300 businesses in New York and developed community organizations.
Arab Americans became part of a literary renaissance, reinvigorating the Arabic press in the Middle East after the linotype machine was converted to Arabic characters by the brothers Naoum and Salloum Mokarzel, of Little Syria’s Al-Hoda newspaper. The community published more than 50 Arabic language newspapers between 1890 and 1940, beginning in 1892 with Kawkab Amirka, the first Arabic language newspaper in North America.
“Everybody wanted to talk politics and talk about the Ottoman Empire,” Fine said. “Out of this journalism scene and this literary inspiration, there was this major movement and innovation in Arabic writing in the United States.”
Read the full article in The Guardian.
