On a quiet stretch of Concord Avenue in Belmont, behind a hand-carved door made in Armenia, sits a library of nearly 39,000 volumes that exists nowhere else on earth. The Armenians in Belmont, Massachusetts have built something rare here: not a crowded immigrant quarter, but a scholarly and prosperous chapter of a story that began with genocide and ended in one of greater Boston’s most comfortable suburbs.
The Place
Belmont was carved out of Watertown, Waltham, and Arlington on March 18, 1859, and named for Bellmont, the 200-acre estate of John Perkins Cushing, its largest founding donor. Its motto, “The Town of Homes,” still fits: 4.7 square miles of leafy streets, three commercial squares, and a hill of large houses west of the city.
By the 2020 census the town held 27,295 residents, and a 2010 median household income of $114,141 marked it as firmly affluent. Belmont High School has ranked among the top public schools in Massachusetts, which is much of the reason families move here, a draw it shares with comparable suburbs like the Chinese community in nearby Newton.
Belmont sits directly against Watertown, the historic heart of Armenian Boston, and that single border explains nearly everything about how Armenians came to call this town home. To understand Belmont, you first have to understand the older Armenian community in Watertown next door.
How It Became Armenian
The first wave, and the city next door
Armenians had been arriving in Massachusetts since the 1870s, drawn first to the mills and factories of Worcester and the Boston area. By 1899 some 14,192 Armenians were recorded across the state. They clustered in Watertown, along Mount Auburn Street, where the Hood Rubber Company and other plants offered steady work.
Then came 1915. The Armenian Genocide drove survivors out of the Ottoman Empire by the tens of thousands, and a great many of them made their way to the parishes and boarding houses already established in Watertown. The community that grew there would become one of the densest Armenian settlements in America.
Those first arrivals were not professionals. They were factory hands, rug menders, tailors, and shopkeepers, people who had survived the unthinkable and wanted, above all, stability. They built churches and benevolent societies, opened groceries and bakeries along Mount Auburn Street, and raised children with a fierce belief in education. Belmont, the prosperous town on the hill, was the place those children would eventually claim.
The move up the hill
Belmont did not draw the immigrants. It drew their grandchildren. As the children of genocide survivors went into medicine, law, engineering, and academia, they did what successful Watertown families did: they moved a short distance to the better schools and bigger houses just across the line.
The geography made it almost frictionless. A family could buy a house in Belmont and still walk or drive a few minutes back to the church, the bakery, and the relatives in Watertown. The institutions stayed put; the people spread outward into the suburb next door.
This is the central fact of Armenian Belmont. It was never a port of arrival. It was a destination of arrival, the second or third address in an American family’s climb. The lavash, the language, and the liturgy travelled the half-mile up from Watertown carried by people who had earned the move. Belmont’s better schools, in turn, produced another generation of doctors and academics, and the cycle reinforced itself decade after decade.
That pattern of suburban Armenian success has repeated across the country, from the Armenian community in Glendale, California to the smaller enclaves of greater Boston. Belmont became the professional, settled version of the Watertown story.
Building institutions of their own
The community did more than commute back to Watertown. It planted roots in Belmont itself. The First Armenian Church, an Armenian Evangelical congregation, established itself at 380 Concord Avenue. Holy Cross Armenian Catholic Church joined the town’s religious landscape.
In 1988 a group of Belmont parents who wanted Eastern Armenian language instruction founded the Erebuni Armenian School, which still teaches children the language and its Little Miracles Children’s Chorus. And in 1989, the most important scholarly institution in the Armenian diaspora moved its headquarters to Belmont.
There is a quiet symmetry in the town’s history with one other institution. The Armenian Museum of America, today the largest Armenian museum in the diaspora, began life in 1972 in two rented rooms of a church parish house in Belmont before it grew and moved to Watertown. Belmont was the cradle; Watertown became the home.
From survivors to selectmen
By the twenty-first century, Armenians in Belmont were no longer simply residents. They were running the town. In April 2021 five Armenian Americans were newly elected to Belmont’s Town Meeting, joining roughly ten others already serving across its eight precincts.
Their names read like a roll call of the community: Berberian, Boyajian, Muckjian, Musserian, Asadoorian, Hovsepian, Kazanjian, Manjikian, Ostayan, Sarno. They sat on the Planning Board, the Human Rights Commission, the Cultural Council, and the Warrant Committee. The grandchildren of refugees had become the people writing the bylaws.
It was the kind of milestone that goes almost unremarked in an assimilated community. One longtime resident, reading the news of the elections, admitted he had lived in Belmont for fourteen years without realising the town had Armenians in its government at all. That invisibility is the paradox of suburban success: the more fully a community belongs, the less it announces itself.
The Landmarks
NAASR Vartan Gregorian Armenian Center, 395 Concord Avenue. The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research opened this striking glass, stone, and steel headquarters on November 1, 2019, designed by the firm SMMA. Its second floor holds the Mardigian Library and its nearly 39,000 cataloged works, entered through a door hand-carved in Armenia.
First Armenian Church, 380 Concord Avenue. An Armenian Evangelical congregation in the United Church of Christ tradition, it serves families across Belmont, Cambridge, and greater Boston. Sunday worship at 10:30 keeps a Protestant strand of Armenian faith alive in a community better known for its Apostolic majority.
House of Lavash, 7 Cushing Avenue. Opened in 2022 by Arman Manoukian, a former diplomat, this small bakery makes airy yeast-free lavash and gata daily, alongside dried apricots and preserves flown in from Armenia. “It’s a meeting place at this point,” Manoukian has said. “People come and talk.”
Erebuni Armenian School, Belmont. Founded in 1988 by parents seeking Eastern Armenian language instruction, the weekend school still teaches the language and runs its Little Miracles Children’s Chorus, one of the few places in greater Boston dedicated to Eastern, rather than Western, Armenian.
Armenian Museum of America, 65 Main Street, Watertown. Just over the Belmont line, the diaspora’s largest Armenian museum holds more than 25,000 artifacts, including some 5,000 ancient and medieval coins and 180 inscribed rugs. It began in Belmont in 1972 before settling in a former bank building in Watertown.
St. James Armenian Church, 465 Mount Auburn Street, Watertown. The Apostolic parish that anchors the wider community sits minutes from Belmont, and its annual bazaar, now past its seventy-eighth year, draws Belmont families back across the line every autumn for choreg, kufta, and kinship.
Friends of Armenian Culture Society, Belmont. A long-running community organisation in town, it has helped sustain the cultural and social life that keeps Armenian Belmont connected to its neighbours in Watertown and Cambridge.
Where They Came From
The Armenians of Belmont trace their roots, almost without exception, to the historic Armenian provinces of the Ottoman Empire: the cities and villages of Anatolia emptied by the genocide of 1915. They are, for the most part, descendants of Western Armenian survivors who landed first in Watertown.
That origin is why most of the older churches here are Apostolic and most of the spoken Armenian is Western. The Erebuni School, teaching Eastern Armenian, marks a later and smaller layer: families with roots in the Republic of Armenia and the Soviet-era and post-Soviet diaspora, who arrived to a community already a century deep.
The pattern of refuge followed by suburban ascent echoes other survivor communities, including the Jewish community in nearby Needham, whose own move to the comfortable suburbs followed a similar logic of schools and safety.
Belmont Today
Armenian ancestry today accounts for roughly five percent of Belmont’s population, a figure that places Armenians among the town’s most established ethnic communities and Belmont among the leading Armenian towns of Middlesex County, behind only Watertown and Waltham. They are doctors, professors, lawyers, and shopkeepers, and they are well represented in town government.
The community is, by design, a quiet one. There is no Armenian commercial strip in Belmont the way there is on Mount Auburn Street in Watertown. Instead there is a bakery in Cushing Square, a scholarly centre on Concord Avenue, two churches, a weekend school, and several hundred families woven into the fabric of an affluent New England town.
That quietness is itself the achievement. The grandparents fled an empire that tried to erase them. Their descendants now sit on Belmont’s Town Meeting, send their children to one of the best high schools in the state, and keep a 39,000-volume library of their heritage a few minutes from home. The community that began in two rented rooms here has, in a sense, come full circle.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Armenians live in Belmont, Massachusetts?
Armenian ancestry accounts for roughly five percent of Belmont’s population, which numbered 27,295 in the 2020 census. That places the Armenians in Belmont among the larger Armenian communities in Middlesex County, after Watertown and Waltham.
Why did Armenians settle in Belmont rather than Watertown?
Most Armenians arrived first in neighbouring Watertown, the historic core of Armenian Boston. Belmont drew the next generations: successful professional families who moved a short distance across the town line for its schools and larger homes while staying close to the churches and businesses of Watertown.
What is NAASR and where is it in Belmont?
NAASR, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, is the diaspora’s leading Armenian scholarly institution. Its Vartan Gregorian Armenian Center opened at 395 Concord Avenue in Belmont in 2019 and houses the Mardigian Library of nearly 39,000 cataloged works.
Are there Armenian churches in Belmont?
Yes. The First Armenian Church, an Armenian Evangelical congregation, sits at 380 Concord Avenue, and Holy Cross Armenian Catholic Church also serves the town. Many Belmont families also attend the Apostolic St. James Armenian Church a few minutes away in Watertown.
Where can I buy Armenian food in Belmont?
House of Lavash at 7 Cushing Avenue, opened in 2022, bakes fresh lavash and gata daily and stocks Armenian dried fruits and preserves. It has become a gathering place for Belmont’s Armenian community, drawing Armenian and non-Armenian regulars alike.
What is the connection between Belmont and the Armenian Museum of America?
The Armenian Museum of America, now the largest Armenian museum in the diaspora, began in 1972 in two rented rooms of a church parish house in Belmont before relocating to Watertown, where it opened to the public in 1985 and bought its Main Street home in 1988.
If your family’s story passed through Belmont, or any of the places Armenians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the lost villages of Anatolia to a hand-carved door on Concord Avenue, to wherever you are now.