Arab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community

Chapter Three: MULTICULTURAL AND MULTIRELIGIOUS NEIGHBORHOODS

Chapter Three MULTICULTURAL AND MULTIRELIGIOUS NEIGHBORHOODS From the hills and valleys of western Syria, the Arab-American immigrants made their journey to the hills and valleys of Worcester. They settled in three vibrant multicultural and multireligious neighborhoods on the east side of the city near the Union Passenger Railroad Station. The neighborhoods were open and fluid ethnomicrocosms of immigrant America, with successive waves of immigrants. One neighborhood was located in a section of Oak Hill, one of Worcester’s fifteen hills,1 in the area of Norfolk and Wall Streets. The second neighborhood was in the area of East Central and East Worcester Streets at the lower end of Shrewsbury Street, near Old Pine Meadow Road.2 The third was on Chandler Hill in the lower Belmont Street area. Today these areas are commonly called Grafton Hill, The Meadows, and Bell Hill, respectively. Albert B. Southwick, in More Once-Told Tales of Worcester County, commented on the diversity in Worcester, noting that while most medium-sized cities had two or three main ethnic groups, Worcester was more like New York—a League of Nations. He said that some historians claim that Worcester ’s population is drawn from more than thirty [ethnic] groups, many of which have lost their identity in the melting pot.3 As early as 1893 the Board of Trade (forerunner of the Worcester Chamber of Commerce), in its Tribute to the Columbian Year, recognized integrated neighborhoods: There are a few streets that do not have both rich and poor living near each other. No one ward can be considered a distinctively poor one, nor any other especially rich.4 Cultural Names of Oak Hill According to when a particular cultural group predominated, the residents called Oak Hill by various cultural names. When the Irish arrived and settled there, it was called Dungarvan Hill;5 when residents were predomi49 50 ARAB-AMERICAN FACES AND VOICES nantly French Canadian, it took on an additional ethnic name, French Hill. According to authors Elbridge Kingsley and Frederick Knab, in Picturesque Worcester: City and Environments, the Irish and French Canadians arrived around 1826.6 Oak Hill was described in The Dictionary of Worcester, 1893: The rising land southeast of the Union Railroad Station, [is] populated largely with French Canadians. The slope rises abruptly from the railroad, and the houses rise one above the other in full view up the declivity.The Bloomingdale Road runs along the side of the hill.7 Italians began to arrive around the 1870s. The majority settled in the Wall Street and Suffolk Street areas and on Shrewsbury Street. According to Dr. John McCoy, pastor of Saint Ann Roman Catholic Church: In 1894 an Italian priest, Vincent Migliore, gathered the people of his race into Saint Stephen’s Church [an Irish parish] with the intention of forming a parish for their benefit. During that time he was unable to make headway to its parish formation beyond the purchase of the piece of property at the junction of Suffolk and Wall Streets . . . and the result was that one of the priests at Saint Stephen’s, who spoke Italian because he had studied in Italy, attempted to do all what he could for the people in the absence of a native Italian priest.8 The majority of Syrians settled in the Oak Hill area around Norfolk and Wall Streets and were a relatively small group until after World War i when they became predominant. Most Arab Americans referred to Oak Hill as el-tellee (the hill, feminine form), and frequently today Arab Americans still refer to it as el-tellee. Many of the Maronites from Lebanon settled in The Meadows, which was called harrate tahta (the place below—the meadows) by the Arab Americans of el-tellee. Among the neighbors of the Maronites were the Irish and Italians, and these three groups worshiped together at Saint Ann Church, founded in 1855.9 Now the two Roman Catholic parishes, Saint Ann and Our Lady of Mount Carmel are joined. Their present church on Mulberry Street was built in 1929. It was common that Arab Americans, Maronites in particular, attended Saint Ann parochial school. Most of the Druze and Muslims settled in the lower end of Belmont Street at Lincoln Square, with some in el-tellee. Multicultural and Multireligious Neighborhoods 51 Communication: The Language Barrier Although the Arab Americans and their neighbors of other cultures spoke in...