Completed b y 1797 the area of Greenwich Street in lower Manhattan is planned, constructed, and land-filled. By 1817 Washington Street becomes the westernmost avenue lined with piers, maritime stores, and basins and remaining waterfront property until the completion and opening of lower West Street in the early 1840s. In the 1850s with the conversion of Castle Clinton into the Castle Garden immigration station nearby, the wealthy began to desert the neighborhood and by the 1880s immigrants of Eastern Europe and the Syrian province began moving in. Little Syria is the former name of a neighborhood that once stretched from Battery Place up to Cedar Street and from Trinity Place to West Street, with Washington Street serving as the Main Street of Syrian America . Selling cool drinks in Syrian Quarter Library Of Congress From the late 1800s until the 1940s construction of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, presently known as the Hug h L. Carey Tunnel, the area was also known as
Background on what is in your neighborhood and the story behind it.