Little Syria

Beginning in the late 1800s, downtown was home to a diverse immigrant population of Syrians, Lebanese, Greeks, Turks, Irish, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians. Behind Trinity Church and to the west of Wall Street were the homes, religious institutions, shops, restaurants and civic associations of this culturally diverse community. The neighborhood was destroyed by two acts of eminent domain: the first to build the Battery Tunnel in the 1940s and the second to construct the World Trade Center. View the remnants of this once vibrant community as we learn about immigrant life on Manhattan’s Lower West Side. Leaders: Joe Svehlak, urban historian and Barbara Rizek, author and former resident. $15, $10 MAS members. Pay at tour. For more information, visit: http://mas.org/tours/#syria