Boston has many cultural districts and ethnic neighborhoods, from Chinatown going back to the 1870s, to the more recently designated Little Saigon in Dorchester. But did you know that from the 1890s to the 1950s, Boston’s first Arabic-speaking neighborhood thrived in what is now Chinatown and the South End? GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz spoke with Lydia Harrington, a historian and co-leader of the public history initiative, the Boston Little Syria Project, to find out more.
Mark Herz: Give us a little history on Little Syria. Where was it exactly? How did it come to be?
Lydia Harrington: Little Syria lasted between about the 1890s and 1950s was located in what’s now Chinatown or what was known more traditionally as the South Cove and the South End. They were coming from what was known as Greater Syria, which includes Lebanon…