How Little Syria vanished from Manhattan's streets

Once a neighbourhood of Arabic shop signs, bookshops, bakeries and newspapers, Lower Manhattan is now all about the money. Queenie Shaikh charts a troubling evolution

- Queenie Shaikh

Smoke curled up from the subway grate as I stepped out of Wall Street station. A drizzle misted the streets as Manhattan mums wrestled with buggies, men in suits sprinted past clutching bagels, and the New York Stock Exchange ticker blinked market updates between the corners of Wall Street and Exchange Place.

It was a regular weekday in the world's most important financial district. The Lower Manhattan skyline towered over me as I waited patiently for the traffic light to turn green, the early summer heat sticking to me despite the rain.

As I turned the corner into Edgar Street, it was hard to believe that this area - now the centre of global finance - was once known as Little Syria, home to the first Arab community in both the United States and the wider continent. Formed in the 1880s by immigrants from Ottoman-controlled Greater Syria, it was once a neighbourhood of Arabic shop signs, bookshops, bakeries and newspapers - the latter made possible by the linotype machine's early adaptation for Arabic script. Around 95,000 Arabs arrived in the States during the Great Migration of 1880–1924, many settling in Lower Manhattan because of its proximity to the docks, where the men could find work.

Exploring this overlooked part of New York's history this year - during the city's 400th anniversary - felt especially poignant. It was a chance to reflect not just on the communities that built it, but on how easily entire histories risk vanishing when neighbourhoods are erased. This reality of erasure felt particularly stark standing opposite the Battery Parking Garage, with a TGI Fridays across the street. If not for the Elizabeth H Berger Plaza tucked in between, there'd be little sign this was ever a cultural stronghold that would have been scented with shisha and baklava rather than pizza and cheesecake.