Founded in 2013
Our Mission
Washington Street Historical Society (WSHS) aims to restore the forgotten history of the earliest Arabic-speaking community in the United States to its rightful place in the Great American Story. Our mission is to foster education and awareness about the early Arab immigrant settlement that flourished on Washington Street in Lower Manhattan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a neighborhood once known as the Syrian Quarter.
Projects
Al Qalam Touring App
The WSHS Touring App is a unique bilingual application that offers a virtual tour of the historic Syrian neighborhood on Washington Street. Archival photos, videos and short essays reconstruct what has been lost to development.
Dig Deeper....
Washington Street Historical society
History
Learn more about the history of Arab migration to the lower Washington Street neighborhood of Manhattan
Archive Gallery
Check out our library of video and still photographs, interviews, documentaries, etc.