Historic Monument Commemorates New York’s Inaugural Arabic-Speaking Community
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration unveiled its first commemorative public artwork on Thursday, April 30, honoring Manhattan’s initial Arabic-speaking enclave, “Little Syria.” The mosaic installation and sculpture, titled “Al Qalam (The Pen): Poets in the Park,” was crafted by French-Moroccan artist Sara Ouhaddou over a decade. It celebrates nine members of the neighborhood’s historic literary community, including Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran, co-founder of “Pen Bond” in 1920.
Located in the Financial District’s Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza, the $1.6 million monument spans the area where Greater Syrian immigrants, hailing from modern-day Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, settled in the late 19th century. By 1900, the community housed around 1,500 individuals, who were displaced in the 1940s due to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel construction.
Ouhaddou’s work, the city’s latest commemorative monument since Central Park’s “Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument” in 2020, faced delays from the COVID-19 pandemic. The New York City Parks Department debuted the monument in a ceremony attended by city officials, including cultural affairs commissioner Diya Vij. The monument was supported by $1.4 million from the Mellon Foundation and partnered with the Washington Street Historical Society.
The installation features mosaics symbolizing the linguistic and cultural translations immigrant writers faced in New York City. Ouhaddou designed these mosaics using a “made-up” geometric alphabet inspired by Islamic architecture, assigning shapes to individual Arabic phonetics. Nearby, a yellow sculpture spells “al Qalam” (“the pen”). Ouhaddou, who speaks several languages but cannot write Arabic, drew on her polyglot background for the work.
Little Syria’s residents established numerous Arabic newspapers, including the first U.S. Arabic newspaper, Kawab America. The enclave’s literary significance is further noted in Gibran’s “The Prophet,” written in English and translated into multiple languages. Among the nine honored writers is poet Elia Abu Madi, whose grandson Bob Madey praised the monument’s abstract design, offering accessibility and provoking understanding of its meaning.