Most peddled on streets when they first arrived, but by 1900, Washington Street boasted Syrian-owned shops, factories, and restaurants; four chapels; a Syrian school to teach adults English and children American history; and a half-dozen Arabic newspapers. Musicians and poets were respected members of the community, performing extemporaneously at weddings, baptisms, and social gatherings. Poetry was regularly published in the newspapers and by the early twentieth century, the Syrians had begun to publish books and magazines in both Arabic and English. Among these writers were Elia Abu Madi, Naseeb Arida, Kahlil Gibran, Nadra Haddad, Mikhail Naimy, and Ameen Rihani, who were instrumental in the formation of a writers’ association called al Rabitah al Qalamiyah (The Pen Bond).
Al Qalam: Poets in the Park
Just steps away from Elizabeth Berger Plaza, the first Arabic-speaking community in the United States took root. Between 1880 and 1945, immigrants from Greater Syria, which encompassed modern-day Lebanon, Syria, and historic Palestine, settled on Washington Street between The Battery and Albany Street. The vibrant neighborhood, known as “the Syrian quarter” or “Little Syria,” was home to about 1,200 Syrians. Their homes were crowded tenements that had been carved from single- family residences built in the early nineteenth century. Like their Irish, German, and Eastern European neighbors, the Syrians lived with no indoor plumbing and no access to fresh air or light. Yet they not only survived but thrived.
Formed first in 1916 and reconstituted in 1920, al Rabitah al Qalamiyah produced works of fiction, poetry, and visual art that imagined new ways of being Arab and American. Their most famous member was Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, published in New York in 1923. Their writing played an important role in the literary renaissance in the Middle East, radically transforming the Arabic language, inspiring generations of later writers in the United States and the Middle East, and creating innovative forms of Arabic literature.
There were many respected members of the literary community who were not members of al Rabitah, including ‘Afifa Karam, Agabia Malouf, and Abbas Abu Shakra.
Development in the financial district led to the community’s displacement, and the district was razed by the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel in the 1940s, claiming much of the neighborhood through eminent domain.
Washington Street Historical Society commissioned the artwork in Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza to celebrate the literary legacy of New York’s first Arabic-speaking community. The Moroccan French artist Sara Ouhaddou was selected through a competition held by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. She designed a sculpture and mosaic panels that display excerpts from the writers’ work in her own abstract alphabet. Ouhaddou treats language like architecture, producing works in glass and mosaic that represent deconstructed poems. The resulting forms are intentionally illegible: an “unreadable translation”
About the artist
Sara Ouhaddou (b. 1986) lives and works between France and Morocco. She explores the relationship between Arab craft traditions and contemporary art practice—contributing to a wider debate about the role of traditional art and craft in Arabic culture today.
