We want to emphasize that we only went public with our frustrations after several years of local historians asking the Museum to incorporate the “Little Syria” history, and after months of meetings, emails, and conference calls where we repeatedly asked the Museum curators to explore even the smallest mention of this history in the permanent exhibit. We had offered to give them quite valuable artifacts to include in their exhibit, and we told them clearly that we would have been satisfied with even the slightest mention. We felt quite justified in making this request because they explicitly told us that the history of “Radio Row,” the other contemporaneous historic neighborhood, would be included in the permanent exhibit, but “Little Syria” would not.

By no means do we want “Little Syria” to distract from the core mission of the National September 11 Museum: to be a place of remembrance and memory of that terrible day. Indeed, we believe that telling the story of the patriotic Arab-American community at that location only reinforces the essential message of this remembrance: that American values of co-existence and freedom, as embodied in the life of “Little Syria,” must always triumph. E pluribus unum.

We are beginning a new “Washington Street Historical Society” (please email us at carlantoun@savewashingtonstreet.org or call 857-234-0920 if you would like to help us initiate it), and we would welcome being partners with the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in the future on a larger exhibit in their rotating space. They have a wonderful curatorial and support team in Jan Ramirez, Jenny Pachucki, Amy Weinstein, Liz Mazucci, Noah Rauch, Alexandra Drakakis, and others, and we are confident that they can, with imagination, find a creative, modest, and elegant way to recognize “Little Syria” in their permanent exhibition as well.

We are also happy to give tours of the neighborhood and the threatened buildings to any media that are interested in covering this story. Please email Todd Fine at toddfine@projectkhalid.org.

We have produced a full report about the Downtown Community House and the tenement at 109 Washington Street for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and we argue strongly that they should schedule a basic hearing to allow us to make our case.

Please join the full meeting at 6:00PM on May 28, at Pace University (140 William Street, 1st Floor) to observe the discussion and the vote by the full Community Board.

WHEREAS: In the late nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth centuries, lower Washington Street from Liberty Street to Battery Park anchored an extraordinarily important and diverse neighborhood of immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe and from the Middle East; and

THEREFORE
BE IT
RESOLVED
THAT: Community Board #1 would support an effort by the City to work with local community groups and historical societies to place a graphic sign with textual history, photographs, and a map of the Lower West Side neighborhood at an appropriate location in the vicinity of this historic area.

This is indeed an urgent situation, and we would ask that people contact the Landmarks Preservation Commission (Chairman Robert Tierney) and Mayor Bloomberg, asking them to hold a simple hearing. No other major ethnic neighborhood has been devastated like Little Syria, and our architectural report this summer should meet the threshold for a hearing.

We are prepared to give tours of Washington Street to any media outlets (local, national, and international), and we encourage you to contact Carl and myself with any ideas that you have. Please call Todd Fine at 857-234-0920 for media inquiries.

The evening event involved the presentation of awards to Wayne T. Muratore (Lifetime Achievement Award), Mona Aboelnaga Kanaan (Woman of the Year), and Laith M. Jazrawi (Community Service Award), and the event chairs were Ralph A. Succar, John H. Abi-Habib, Emil G. Baccash, Joseph M. Elhilow, George N. Jalinos, Gregory G. Lutfey, Tony S. Msallem, and Wayne T. Muratore.

Donations to the Hospital sent by clicking on this link will still count toward the club’s total, and we encourage you to support this campaign — which directly links the New York Arab-American community to the wonderful efforts of St. Jude’s to help children. They are close to a total donation of $200,000 and will hopefully exceed this amount by the end of the year.

For more information about this event or the fundraising campaign, please contact:

Karla Micalizzi
(212) 239-3239
karla.micalizzi@stjude.org

However, a few of the neighborhood’s great advocates — local historian Joe Svehlak and community activist Esther Regelson — are still going forward with a walking tour that they had scheduled for Saturday, November 10, 2012 at 2PM. If you are in New York and would like to see Washington Street for yourself, this is a tremendous opportunity to learn from two people who have done enormous work to raise awareness of the area’s history. I first learned about this preservation situation from them, and we are now collaborating together in further projects to improve education about Washington Street and Little Syria.

The meeting place is “inside the Staten Island Ferry Terminal at the bottom of the escalators on the left side.” You can also call Joe Svehlak (718-855-7354) or Esther Regelson (212-349-4396) for more information.

The Save Washington Street campaign congratulates Catherine McVay Hughes in her new role as chairperson and encourages Community Board One to continue pressing on this issue, which continues to generate local concern and to receive global media attention. The new report produced by the Save Washington Street campaign offers sufficient detail that should justify a hearing on these buildings, as the Community Board has advocated for years.

The current members of Community Board One are: Marc J. Ameruso, Linda Belfer, Peter Braus, Roger Byrom, George Calderaro, Deron Charkoudian, Susan Cole, Michael Connolly, Mark Costello, Marva Craig, Ann M. DeFalco, Jeff Ehrlich, Bruce L. Ehrmann, John Fratta, Jeff Galloway, Dennis Gault, Linda Gerstman, Tom Goodkind, Oliver Gray, Paul Hovitz, Mariama James, Noel E. Jefferson, Tricia Joyce, Michael Ketring, Joel Kopel, Elizabeth Lamere, Diane Lapson, Joseph Lerner, Adam Malitz, Megan McHugh, Catherine McVay Hughes, Tammy Meltzer, Julie Menin, Jeffrey Mihok, Patricia L. Moore, Anthony Notaro, Ruth Ohman, Una L. Perkins, Harold Reed, Robert Schneck, Coren Sharples, Edward Sheffe, Paul Sipos, Michael Skidmore, Vera Sung, Allan Tannenbaum, Robert Townley, Paul Viggiano, and Chow Xie.

COMMUNITY BOARD #1 – MANHATTAN RESOLUTION
DATE: APRIL 17, 2007
COMMITTEE OF ORIGIN: LANDMARKS
COMMITTEE VOTE: 7 In Favor, 0 Opposed
BOARD VOTE: 38 In Favor, 0 Opposed, 1 Abstained

103-105-107 Washington Street “Little Syria,” request for a hearing to consider designation

WHEREAS: These two buildings – 103 Washington Street and 105-107 Washington Street, along with the neighboring tenement at 109 Washington Street – represent the remnants of an astonishing and unsung community, whose decline started with the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and whose disappearance was completed by the erection of the World Trade
Center, and

WHEREAS: This once-thriving immigrant neighborhood existed for a century in the far lower West Side, from The Battery to Washington Market, and is beautifully described by Barbara and Martin Rizek and Joanne Medvecky in their recent book, The Financial District’s Lost Neighborhood 1900-1970, and

WHEREAS: 103 Washington Street, now Moran’s Bar, is a building first constructed in the 1870s and redone in 1929 in beautiful pristine cream terra cotta as St. George’s Syrian Roman Catholic Church, and

WHEREAS: 105-107 Washington Street is a crisp and austere Federal-style settlement house completed in 1925, and

WHEREAS: Along with the architecturally undistinguished but culturally significant 1871 tenement at 109 Washington Street, these three buildings represent a suite of life from immigrant arrival to residence to cultural center in the forgotten Manhattan village of “Little Syria” which, like the lower East Side, included a wide range of immigrants from all over the world, and

WHEREAS: While the Landmarks Committee was initially skeptical, the presentation made by the Rizeks (the above-named book’s co-authors) and Joe Svehlak, a preservationist, was so compelling and convincing that the committee had every reason to appreciate at least 103 and 105-107 Washington Street’s merits if, for no other reasons, than on architectural grounds alone, now

THEREFORE
BE IT
RESOLVED
THAT:

Community Board #1 urges the Landmarks Preservation Commission to hold a hearing to consider landmarks designation of these properties.