Armenian refugees, bread, neighborhood
June is “Immigrant Heritage Month.” Throughout the month we will be posting materials relating to immigration and immigrant cultures of NYC.
One hundred years ago today … An Armenian immigrant family arrived at Ellis Island carrying this wooden press used for making Koftah, a kind of flatbread.
From Chermayeff, Ivan, and Fred Wasserman and Mary J. Shapiro, Ellis Island: An Illustrated History of the Immigrant Experience. New York: MacMillan and Co., 1991. 201.
Armenian immigrant Alice Semerjian recalled the experience of arriving at Ellis Island in 1921:
There were separate lines for women and men for medical examinations. I remember my father tightly holding my brother’s hand. In his other hand he carried a valise that he would not allow an attendant to take from him. It contained precious family memorabilia.
(Chermayeff, 233)
The major years of Armenian immigration to the US were between 1899 and 1931, during which 81,729 Armenian immigrants entered the US, mostly coming through Ellis Island (Patel). In the years after 1915, Armenian refugees arrived fleeing the genocide of that saw over a million Armenians killed by the Turkish government from 1915-1917.
Map of Little Armenia from StoryMaps.
Many settled in “Little Armenia,” which was roughly between 23rd and 34th Streets, from Lexington to 3rd Avenue, within the Murray Hill area.
One store that served an Armenian immigrant clientele was H.M. Tashjian’s “Armenian and Turkish Record Center,” first located at 388 3rd Avenue, later at 353 3rd Avenue. Below is a 1928 advertisement that ran in Hayreniq, an Armenian-language newspaper published in Boston.
Hayreniq, 29 November 1928, p. 4. Union Catalog of Armenian Continuing Resources
References / Further reading":
Patel, Bhavna. “Little Armenia, New York.” The Armenite, 17 March 2014.
Sagsoorian, Paul. “Growing up as an Armenian American in New York City Between the Two World Wars.” Hyetert, 7 July 2014.
Suny, Ronald Grigor. "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton University Press, 2015.
– Jonathan Goldman, June 4, 2021
TAGS: Armenian, neighborhood, immigration, food, mass murder