On a narrow street on the South Side of Providence, in a converted house at the corner of Hanover and Public, monks in saffron robes have been chanting since 1980. The temple they founded is the oldest Cambodian Buddhist temple in the United States, and it sits at the heart of one of the most remarkable refugee stories in New England. To understand the Cambodians in Providence is to understand how a tiny city, less expensive than New York or Boston, became a sanctuary for people who had survived one of the twentieth century’s worst genocides.
The Place
Providence is the capital of Rhode Island, the smallest state in the country, and it has always been a city of arrivals. Irish, French Canadian, Italian, Cape Verdean and Portuguese families built their lives in its triple-decker neighbourhoods, drawn by jewellery factories, textile mills and the port.
The Cambodian community settled mostly on the South Side and in the West End, in the dense streets around Hanover, Public and Cranston, where rents were low and homes could hold extended families. These were working neighbourhoods rather than wealthy ones, and that affordability was the whole point. For refugees arriving with nothing, Providence offered something the bigger Northeastern cities could not: a roof at half the price.
How It Became Cambodian
The Cambodians in Providence did not come by choice in the ordinary sense. They came as survivors. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot emptied Cambodia’s cities, abolished money and religion, and killed an estimated one and a half to two million people through execution, starvation and forced labour. When the regime fell, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fled across the border into refugee camps in Thailand.
The first arrivals, 1979 to 1982
From those camps, the United States began resettling Cambodian refugees, often through religious sponsors. In Rhode Island, many of the earliest families were taken in by Catholic sponsor families and supported by voluntary agencies including Catholic Charities, the International Institute and the Tolstoy Foundation.
By March 1982, more than 1,600 Cambodian refugees had reached Providence. In January of that single month, 113 Cambodians arrived in the city. The Christian Science Monitor reported at the time that newcomers found work most easily when an American sponsor walked them into the door of a local employer.
Why Providence, and the secondary migration
A great many Cambodians did not arrive in Providence directly from the camps. They came from elsewhere in the United States, part of what resettlement officials called secondary migration. By the early 1980s, roughly 40 per cent of Cambodians receiving cash assistance in Rhode Island had moved there from other American cities.
The draw was simple economics. As Kathy McCaughey, a refugee coordinator at the International Institute, told the Monitor in 1982, there was no reason to stay away from Providence because rents were less than half those of New York or Boston. The city also had work that suited newcomers: its electronics and jewellery firms were smaller and less battered by recession than heavy manufacturing elsewhere.
A federal cluster resettlement programme had also tried to ease the heavy concentration of Cambodians in southern California by creating new communities in a handful of cities. Providence became one of the places where those scattered families took root and then drew relatives to join them.
The temple and a monk named Ghosananda
The spiritual centre of this new community arrived in person in late 1980. Maha Ghosananda, born in Takeo Province in 1929, was a Theravada Buddhist monk who had been studying abroad when the Khmer Rouge murdered most of Cambodia’s monks, including members of his own family.
In 1978 he had cashed in a plane ticket to print 40,000 copies of the Metta Sutta, the Buddha’s discourse on lovingkindness, and distributed them through the refugee camps. In 1980 he settled in Providence, and at his home at 178 Hanover Street he and his supporters established Wat Thormikaram, the first Cambodian Buddhist temple in the United States.
The congregation, which had first met in private homes, received non-profit status in 1981 as the New England Buddhist Center, later renamed the Khmer Buddhist Society of New England. Ghosananda went on to be recognised as the Supreme Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He died in 2007, but the temple he founded on Hanover Street still anchors the community.
Building institutions, 1982 onward
Faith was one pillar. Mutual aid was the other. In 1982 the Cambodian Society of Rhode Island was founded to serve the refugees arriving in the state, helping with language, employment, housing and the slow work of cultural preservation. It still operates today from 177 Hanover Street, the same short stretch of road as the temple.
By 1987, more than 12,000 Southeast Asian refugees had settled in Rhode Island, Cambodians prominent among them. The community that had begun with a handful of families and a single monk had become a permanent and organised presence in the city. The parallels with other New England Cambodian centres are clear, from the Cambodians in Lowell, Massachusetts to the Cambodians in Lynn, Massachusetts, who travelled similar roads out of the same camps.
The Landmarks
Wat Thormikaram, 177-179 Hanover Street. Founded in 1980 by Maha Ghosananda, this is the oldest Cambodian Buddhist temple in the United States. It began in a private home and grew into the spiritual anchor for thousands of refugees across New England, hosting Khmer New Year and the ancestor festival of Pchum Ben each year.
Cambodian Society of Rhode Island, 177 Hanover Street. Founded in 1982, the society has brought the Khmer community together for more than four decades. It runs a Khmer dance troupe, a Khmer drum troupe and an annual scholarship, and organises the state’s Khmer New Year celebration and the Cambodian genocide National Day of Remembrance.
Apsara Asian Restaurant, Public Street. A long-standing South Side restaurant serving Cambodian home-style cooking alongside Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese dishes. Regulars come for nime chow, the Cambodian spring rolls served with peanut sauce, and for lort cha, the short chewy rice noodles with a smoky-sweet finish from soy and fish sauce.
The AAPI History Museum, downtown Providence. Billed as the first Asian American and Pacific Islander history museum, it tells the Cambodian story directly. A wall exhibit titled From the Mekong to the Narragansett recounts how Lao, Cambodian, Hmong and Vietnamese refugees fled Southeast Asia in the 1970s and rebuilt their lives in Rhode Island.
The West End and South Side streets. The blocks around Hanover, Public, Cranston and Broad are where the community concentrated. Grocers, markets and small businesses serving Khmer families grew up alongside the longer-established Italian, Cape Verdean and Latino presence in these dense, walkable neighbourhoods.
Pchum Ben at the temple. Each autumn the temple observes Pchum Ben, the fifteen-day festival in which Cambodians pay respect to deceased relatives across as many as seven generations. Families bring food offerings to the monks, and for many it is the most important gathering of the year.
Khmer New Year celebrations. In mid-April the community marks Cambodian New Year with morning ceremonies in which Buddhist monks bless those who attend, followed by evening performances from the Khmer dance troupe. It is the public face of the community, open and joyful after decades of quiet rebuilding.
Where They Came From
The Cambodians of Providence trace their origins to villages and towns across Cambodia, from the rice country of Takeo and the southern provinces to Phnom Penh and Battambang. What unites them is not a single home region but a shared passage: the cities emptied in 1975, the years of forced labour, and the long flight to the Thai border camps such as Khao-I-Dang.
From those camps the journey continued to American sponsors, and for the many who arrived through secondary migration, to a second American city before Providence. Some had first landed in California, where the largest Cambodian communities formed, including the Cambodians in Long Beach, California and the Cambodians in Stockton, California, before moving east for cheaper rents and steadier work.
Providence Today
Rhode Island today has the highest per capita Cambodian population of any state in the country. The 2020 Census counted 5,176 Cambodian residents statewide, about 0.5 per cent of the population, and recent surveys put the Cambodian population of Providence itself at roughly 8,000. For so small a city, that is a community of real weight.
The second and third generations have moved well beyond the survival economy of the 1980s. They are teachers, nurses, business owners and civic figures, and many have moved to suburbs around the city while keeping their roots on the South Side. The temple and the Cambodian Society still draw them back for Khmer New Year, for Pchum Ben, and for the slow work of keeping the language and the dances alive.
The West End and South Side are changing, as Providence neighbourhoods do, with reinvestment arriving alongside long-standing worries about affordability. But the corner of Hanover Street holds. A temple founded by a refugee monk in 1980, and a community society founded two years later, still stand within steps of each other, the durable centre of a story that began in catastrophe and became, in this small city, a home.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Cambodians live in Providence, Rhode Island?
Recent American Community Survey estimates put the Cambodian population of Providence at roughly 8,000. Statewide, the 2020 Census counted 5,176 people identifying solely as Cambodian, about 0.5 per cent of Rhode Island’s population, the highest per capita rate of any state.
Why did Cambodians settle in Providence?
The Cambodians in Providence first arrived as refugees from the Khmer Rouge genocide, resettled by Catholic sponsors and voluntary agencies from 1979 onward. Many others came later through secondary migration, drawn by rents less than half those of New York or Boston and by jewellery and electronics work that suited newcomers.
What is the oldest Cambodian temple in America?
Wat Thormikaram on Hanover Street in Providence is recognised as the oldest Cambodian Buddhist temple in the United States. It was founded in 1980 by the monk Maha Ghosananda, who settled in the city after most of Cambodia’s monks were killed under the Khmer Rouge.
Who was Maha Ghosananda?
Maha Ghosananda was a Cambodian Buddhist monk born in Takeo Province in 1929. He settled in Providence in 1980, founded Wat Thormikaram, became the Supreme Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He died in 2007.
What festivals does the Cambodian community in Providence celebrate?
The Cambodians in Providence mark Khmer New Year in mid-April with monk blessings and traditional dance, and Pchum Ben in the autumn, a fifteen-day festival honouring deceased ancestors. Both are observed at Wat Thormikaram and organised in part by the Cambodian Society of Rhode Island.
Where can you find Cambodian food in Providence?
Apsara Asian Restaurant on Public Street is a long-standing South Side spot serving Cambodian home-style dishes such as nime chow spring rolls and lort cha noodles, alongside Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese cooking. Several smaller Khmer eateries and markets also operate in the West End and South Side.
If your family’s story passed through Providence, or any of the places Cambodians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the rice fields of Takeo and the camps on the Thai border, to a temple on Hanover Street, to wherever you are now.