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Walking Tour of Boston’s Little Syria (off-site) [AT CAPACITY]

A black and white photograph depicts two woman and one man on the front steps of a stone building.
Syrians sitting on a front step on Hudson Street, 1909. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Trustees of Boston Public Library.

Special Event

In-Person

This event is at capacity.

This event requires registration; see further details below.

Note that this walking tour takes place at an off-site location, starting in Chinatown and ending in the South End. Specific location details will be sent upon registration.

Organized specially for the Harvard Art Museums by the Boston Little Syria Project, this tour will take you on a journey through Boston’s little-known first Arab neighborhood. Located between what is now Chinatown and the South End, Little Syria became home to immigrants from Ottoman-controlled Syria and Mount Lebanon beginning in the 19th century.

Your tour guides Lydia Harrington and Chloe Bordewich will discuss the lives of Syrian and Lebanese Americans who lived in this thriving neighborhood between the 1880s and 1950s, blending the history of the modern Middle East and Boston’s urban history.

This walking tour accompanies the exhibition Boston’s Little Syria (January 22–May 31, 2024), co-curated by Lydia Harrington and Chloe Bordewich, at the Grossman Gallery, in the Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Led by:
Lydia Harrington, Curator and Historian

Chloe Bordewich, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute & Critical Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Toronto

Registration is required and space is limited. Registration for the tour will open on this form, beginning Friday, March 15, and participants will be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis. To join the waitlist, please email bostonlittlesyriaproject@gmail.com.

This program is presented by the Harvard Art Museums in partnership with the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University at Harvard University.

The tour is one of three events related to the 2024 Norma Jean Calderwood Lecture at the Harvard Art Museums, featuring an artist talk by Mohamad Hafez, “Preserving Memory and Loss” on April 17. Please see the lecture listing for more information about the related programming.