The Disappearance of Syriantown: A History of Middle Eastern Immigration to Boston
Since Boston’s founding, immigrants have contributed immensely to the city’s character, vibrancy, and culture. From the painted streets and green sports jerseys that capture Irish roots, to the Italian culture preserved in the historic North End, European immigration is widely recognized for the central role it has played in Boston history. However, European immigrants were not the only ones to build the city and help it flourish culturally and economically. Beneath the cracks of the sidewalks and amid the rush of the city streets brimming with life, the story of centuries of Middle Eastern immigration in Boston lies concealed.
In the 1880s, Ottoman Arab citizens faced new economic and military challenges, including a failing agricultural sector, growing taxation, and mandatory conscription, all of which contributed to the first wave of immigration to Boston. Pressures of a slipping economy and declining civil and national liberties within the empire resulted in groups of male temporary residents coming to the United States for short periods of time. In search of more lucrative jobs than those available in the Ottoman Empire, these men planned to return home with greater means to support themselves and their families. By the early 1900s, Boston also attracted a large number of wives and widowers who brought their children with them to start a new life. These families comprised the first instances of permanent Middle Eastern migration to Boston, and they laid the foundation for the development of a vibrant neighborhood which would later become known as “Syriantown”.
This first wave of Middle Eastern immigration to Boston created the second largest Syrian population in the United States, settling alongside Chinese immigrants on Oxford Street, Edinboro Street, and Oliver Place (now Ping On Alley). As the community grew, the South Cove neighborhood became known as Little Syria or Syriantown. The name indicated that the neighborhood had developed a strong and lasting Middle Eastern identity in Massachusetts. Three churches on Kneeland Street eventually became cultural centers while restaurants, shops, and cafes quickly opened their doors to offer Middle Eastern cuisine and imported goods. The establishment of religious and cultural institutions in the heart of Boston converged with the emergence of additional jobs to employ the new workforce. The city’s Middle Eastern population mostly found work in the textile and manufacturing industries.
Middle Eastern immigrants often faced prejudice in Boston, as these marginalized groups were seen as unskilled and “damaging” to native Bostonians. Many locals believed that immigration destroyed the “white purity” of the city, took away jobs, and corrupted their culture. Furthermore, the inability of immigrants to naturalize allowed the government to systematically discriminate against them by not granting them full naturalized rights. Citizenship laws posed barriers to immigrants of color, who were forced to receive legal recognition as white in order to become naturalized. Until the 1915 Supreme Court ruling Dow v. The United States, in which the Court classified Western Asian and Middle Eastern people as white in the U.S. census, the nationalization of Middle Eastern immigrants was impossible. However, even after the ruling, widespread xenophobia encouraged Boston’s Middle Eastern population to remain in Syriantown, where the neighborhood’s cultural, economic, and religious conditions attracted the community and kept generations close. Nearly three quarters of the Bostonian Syrian immigrant population resided within Syriantown as late as 1920.
Immigration halted in the wake of the 1924 National Origins Act, which enforced strict immigration quotas according to national origin. For 20 years, only hundreds of immigrants from the Middle East per year were allowed to settle in Boston. The establishment of the Immigration Act of 1965 eventually eliminated the quota system and established hierarchies of priority. Encouraged by this policy change, immigrants in the second wave of Middle Eastern migration were incentivized to leave their countries of origin by wars and conflict throughout the region, such as the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the Lebanese Civil War, the 1991 Gulf War, and more recent conflicts in Iraq and Syria.
After the Second World War, the expansion of suburbs moved new and old generations of Middle Eastern immigrants away from Syriantown and other neighborhoods within the city. Various distinct Muslim communities formed during this period, settling in cities around Boston, such as Roxbury and Roslindale. In pursuit of higher education, many immigrants also settled around universities in Brookline and Cambridge. In the 1960s, the remaining inhabitants of Syriantown received eviction notices and were forced out of their historic and cultural epicenter. The area, including homes, restaurants, factories, and businesses, was demolished for the extension of the Massachusetts Turnpike. New apartments and condo buildings replaced old cafes and residences, and the textile companies that fueled Boston’s economy for decades were replaced with the Tufts Medical Center. The rich presence of Syriantown vanished from Boston.
Just as in the 1880s, refugees from the Middle East have resumed migration into Boston since the 1990s to escape violence and unrest in their home countries. Though many are asylum seekers, a vast majority of Middle Eastern newcomers arrive for economic reasons, such as stagnation and unemployment. However, this wave of immigration significantly declined after the 9/11 attacks due to increased anti-Middle Eastern sentiment, which has remained a nationwide issue to the present day. Islamophobia and anti-Middle Eastern prejudice has increased dramatically in recent years due to a misguided association between the Arab world and terrorism, even though it can be argued that most terrorist attacks that occur on US soil are committed by white people (note that the linked source differentiates between “white” and “Middle Eastern” offenders).
After the 2015 terrorist attack in Paris and former President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric on the campaign trail, public treatment of Middle Eastern immigrants became increasingly hostile. Trump’s rhetoric switfly turned into policy as he banned immigration from most of the Muslim world on his first day in office. Many immigrants escaping terrorism themselves are shocked to discover that they are treated as threats in the United States. Just as the experiences of Middle Eastern immigrants in the past are erased by xenophobia and racism, these same plagues isolate present day immigrants from broader society. Though their influence on the development of the city remains crucial, past and present generations of Middle Eastern immigrants are consistently being excluded from Boston’s history.
Though the neighborhood once known as Syriantown was razed, generations of Middle Eastern immigrants played an integral role in enriching Boston’s culture and establishing its economy. The first step to counteract the misinformation and prejudice which creates an unwelcoming climate for immigrants is to recognize the importance of immigrants to Boston's development. Teaching the history of those who built the foundations, institutions, and culture of Boston will not only highlight the generations of Middle Eastern immigrants who have lived here, but will also create a more inclusive environment for generations to come.
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