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109 Washington Street
109 Washington Street is a five-story tenement in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City, within the area once known as Little Syria. Due to demolitions connected to the construction of the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel and the World Trade Center, it stands as the last tenement on a portion of lower Washington Street that has been estimated by Kate Reggev to have contained around 50 tenements. After September 11, 2001, its proximity to the World Trade Center site made it the subject of some media attention, including a nationally syndicated radio story about the experiences of its residents on the day of the attack. In recent years, community officials, activists, and preservationists have advocated for its designation as a landmark as part of a mini-historical district with the connected buildings of St. George's Syrian Catholic Church and the Downtown Community House.
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26 m
Downtown Community House
The Downtown Community House at 105-107 Washington Street is a six-story, five-bay red brick building that is among the last vestiges of the Lower West Side of Manhattan's former life as an ethnic neighborhood known as “Little Syria.” From the time of its establishment, the Bowling Green Neighborhood Association, housed in the Downtown Community House beginning in 1926, was a pioneering organization that served the local immigrant population as a settlement house and continued to provide services for the area well after the community house became defunct. Built in 1925 with philanthropic funds from William H. Childs, the founder of the Bon Ami household cleaner company, the Downtown Community House was designed by John F. Jackson, architect of over 70 Y.M.C.A. buildings and community centers, and through its Colonial Revival style speaks to an underlying desire for the neighborhood's immigrant population to become Americanized and associate themselves with the country's foundations. In recent years, a collection of historic preservationists and Arab-American activists have lobbied the Landmarks Preservation Commission and its chairman Robert Tierney to designate the building as a city landmark.
27 m
St. George's Syrian Catholic Church
St. George's Syrian Catholic Church is a former church located at 103 Washington Street between Rector Street and Carlisle Street in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. The church is the last physical reminder of the Syrian American and Lebanese American community that once lived in Little Syria.
63 m
Little Syria, Manhattan
Little Syria (Arabic: سوريا الصغيرة) was a diverse neighborhood that existed in the New York City borough of Manhattan from the late 1880s until the 1940s. The name for the neighborhood came from the Arabic-speaking Christian population who emigrated from Ottoman Syria, an area which today includes the nations of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. Also called the Syrian Quarter, or Syrian Colony in local newspapers it encompassed a few blocks reaching from Washington Street in Battery Park to above Rector Street. This neighborhood became the center of New York's first community of Arabic-speaking immigrants. In spite of this name the neighborhood was never exclusively Syrian or Arab, as there were also many Irish, German, Slavic, and Scandinavian immigrant families present.
The neighborhood declined as the inhabitants began moving out to other areas, Brooklyn Heights, the Sunset Park area and Bay Ridge, with many shops relocating to Atlantic Avenue, in Brooklyn. The community disappeared almost entirely when a great deal of lower Washington Street was demolished to make way for the entrance ramps to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. The quarter was located at the southern edge of the site that would become the World Trade Center. After the September 11 terrorist attacks the cornerstone of the Syrian St. Joseph's Maronite Church was found in the rubble.
75 m
W New York Downtown Hotel and Residences
W New York - Downtown Hotel and Residences is a 630-foot-tall building (190 m) at 8 Albany Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The 58-story building was completed in 2010, and is tied with two other buildings, Home Insurance Plaza and the W.R. Grace Building as the 106th tallest building in New York. It is divided between a 217-room hotel, on floors 5-22, and 223 luxury residential condominiums, on floors 23–56, with lobbies for both on floors 1–4. There is a residential observation deck on the 57th floor, with views of the Hudson River, and a terrace on the 58th floor with panoramic views of lower Manhattan.
The building was designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, and the interior was by Graft's Los Angeles office. The developer is the Moinian group, founded by Joseph Moinian. The hotel opened on August 18, 2010.
In 2010, the building was featured in a HGTV contest in which a $1.5 million apartment was given to the winner as a prize.
In July 2020, it was announced that the hotel would close on October 13, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the residential units remained open but lost access to the hotel's amenities.