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But the bar also closed – according to the operators, because sales collapsed after the attacks due to the amount of construction work in the area. Today the small house on Washington Street, next to which a 50-story hotel rises up, now houses a Chinese restaurant. Hidden behind a water connection, on the outer facade is one of the last publicly visible references to a lesser-known, but historically and socially significant part of the history of the district: St. George Syrian Church.
Between about 1880 and 1940 this area of Manhattan was known as “Little Syria”, “Little Syria”, and the little house on Washington Street was one of its centers as a church. “This neighborhood tells a story about the American immigration experience,” says Fine, who is currently writing his doctoral thesis, is partly of Jewish descent and who became an activist for the preservation of the neighborhood after the terrorist attacks through an interest in Arab-American literature. “During the reconstruction after September 11th, we wanted to prevent the last traces of the Arab-American heritage in Manhattan from being destroyed.”
Several thousand people who immigrated from the Lebanon Mountains and today’s Syria settled in the area and mainly worked in wholesaling and tailoring. Signs with Arabic script, street vendors, water pipes and stalls with liquorice juice dominated the streetscape. Many of the immigrants were Christians. “But there was also a mosque,” says activist Fine, pointing to a skyscraper not far away. “About where the Dunkin ‘Donuts is now.”
There is not much left of “Little Syria”. Next to the church, which has been converted into a Chinese restaurant, there are two buildings from the same period, one of which was a community center. It is currently empty; from its time as a Buddhist temple it still has a few Buddha figures between the original eagles on the facade. Fine estimates that around two dozen buildings will remain. Only about a handful of them are listed, he and his colleagues fight every day to preserve the others.
Reconstruction boom after 9/11
Their opponents include real estate investors and luxury brokers who wanted to give the district a chic new name in the post-9/11 reconstruction boom: Greenwich South. And homeowners who are probably changing the facades radically to ward off the expensive and cumbersome monument protection for them. “These are some of the oldest buildings in New York,” says Fine, pointing to three inconspicuous little houses on a neighboring street. “The owner of the one on the right has a strip club and he put it three floors up because he knows the house is harder to protect if he messes it up.”
The city of New York has announced that a monument to the history of “Little Syria” will be placed in a park in the south of the district that is currently under renovation. “We’ve had some successes and some setbacks,” says Fine. “But I remain optimistic.”
After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, he was disturbed by the reaction of some of his compatriots, says Fine. “There has been so much dehumanization, there have been people who have said that we have to throw atomic bombs all over the Middle East without knowing what they are talking about. And once you start there is no stopping it . That still worries me very much – and I think the history of immigration is one of the most powerful that we can counter, because people can identify with it. ”
Missed opportunity
Some younger Arab immigrants, who now mainly live in parts of Brooklyn, are beginning to be interested in the history of “Little Syria” again. “And I think many of you agree with me that it is a missed opportunity so far to demystify the Middle East and explain the continuities.”
On the 19th anniversary of the attacks, the area, which has just been declared a boom quarter again by city officials, is struggling with the consequences of the Corona crisis. According to the operator, the memorial museum plans to reopen on September 12th after a six-month break. The two cones of light that shine into the sky from the location of the attacks every year around Memorial Day are there again – after the campaign had actually already been canceled due to health concerns due to the pandemic.
Many of the area’s newly built skyscrapers are still not fully let – which shouldn’t be easier now. “Perhaps the pandemic will finally let people see how much of the investment in New York over the past 20 years was not for real New Yorkers, but for banks or tourists,” says Fine. “And maybe now we’re finally thinking about how we can support real authentic areas.”
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