They called it Little Australia. Not officially. You will not find that on any subway map or street sign. But walk down Mott Street on a Saturday morning, push through the door of Bluestone Lane or Two Hands, and the order in front of you is for a flat white. The voice taking it is a Sydney accent. The avocado on sourdough has the same finish it has in Bondi or Fitzroy. Somewhere between 2010 and 2026, the small streets of Nolita became the densest concentration of Australians anywhere in the United States.
The place itself
Nolita stands for North of Little Italy. It is a five-by-five block stretch of Lower Manhattan bordered by Houston Street to the north, Lafayette to the west, the Bowery to the east, and Broome Street to the south. Mott, Mulberry, Elizabeth, and Prince are the four streets that carry most of the foot traffic. The buildings are mostly five and six storey tenements from the late nineteenth century, with cast iron fire escapes and ground floor shopfronts that turn over often. The 6 train at Spring Street and the B, D, F, M at Broadway-Lafayette put it within a minute of almost anywhere in Manhattan.
For most of its history this was Italian Manhattan. Then it was a quiet residential pocket between Chinatown and SoHo. Since the early 2010s, it has been something else.
How Nolita became Australian
Before the Australians
Nolita was the northern extension of Little Italy until the mid twentieth century. Mott Street and Mulberry Street were the spine of Italian Manhattan, with parish life centred on the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mulberry Street and on the family run grocers, bakeries, and social clubs that lined the blocks below Houston.
The community thinned across the postwar decades as second and third generation Italian families moved to Brooklyn, Queens, and the suburbs. By the early 2000s, the blocks above Kenmare Street had been rebranded Nolita by real estate brokers and were filling with boutiques and small restaurants. The Italian street fabric remained. The Italian population did not.
The first Australians arrive
The first Australian anchor was a café. Ruby’s opened on Mulberry Street in 2003, founded by two Australians, Nick Mathers and Lincoln Pilcher. They picked Nolita because the low rise buildings and quiet streets reminded them of Paddington in Sydney. Within a few years Pilcher was calling Ruby’s the unofficial Australian embassy in New York. New arrivals heard about it from a flatmate back home, walked in for a flat white, and ended up swapping numbers with someone from Perth who had just signed a lease around the corner.
The legal pathway that made the rest of the story possible arrived two years later. On 11 May 2005, the United States created the E-3 visa, a new category negotiated as part of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. The E-3 is available only to Australian citizens. It allows holders to work in a specialty occupation, lasts two years, and renews indefinitely. The annual cap is 10,500 visas, far more than has ever been issued in a single year. For Australian graduates eyeing New York, it was the cleanest immigration pathway any nationality had ever been handed.
Nolita at its peak
The café boom followed the visa. In July 2013, Nick Stone, a former Melbourne banker, opened Bluestone Lane at 805 Third Avenue in Midtown. The format was hole in the wall, the menu was tight, the coffee was from a La Marzocco machine, and the staff were almost all Australian. Bluestone Lane became a chain almost immediately, with Nolita and SoHo locations following in quick succession.
The next year, in 2014, Henry Roberts and Giles Russell opened the first Two Hands at 164 Mott Street. Both founders had worked in Australian hospitality. They wanted bright, plant filled rooms, simple food, and a flat white made the way it was made at home. The original Mott Street café is still there today and is still the spiritual centre of Nolita’s Australian scene.
By 2011, the Australian Consulate in New York estimated 20,000 Australian residents in the city, nearly quadruple the 5,537 counted in 2005. The community kept growing. Today the number is somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000, depending on who is counting and which visas they include. The largest share lives in Manhattan, with Nolita, SoHo, the West Village, and the Williamsburg waterfront forming the four corners of the unofficial map.
The hospitality template
Something specific happened in the kitchens. The Australian café template that travelled with these founders was already well developed at home: espresso based coffee with full milk texture, a short brunch menu focused on eggs, avocado, smoked salmon, and grain bowls, bright interiors with greenery, and table service that felt more like a friend’s kitchen than a New York diner. Until the early 2010s, this template barely existed in Manhattan. Within a decade it was the default.
Bluestone Lane now has more than 50 locations across eight states and Washington D.C. Two Hands has grown beyond New York into Austin and Nashville. The flat white, an Australian and New Zealand export, sits on the menu of almost every independent coffee shop in the country. The Australian brunch is no longer a curiosity. It is the format.
The landmarks
Two Hands, 164 Mott Street. Opened by Henry Roberts and Giles Russell in 2014. The original location and the unofficial flagship of Nolita’s Australian scene. Cream walls, plants, table service, and a flat white that does not negotiate.
Ruby’s, 219 Mulberry Street. Opened by Nick Mathers and Lincoln Pilcher in 2003. The first Australian café in the neighbourhood. The Bronte burger, named for the Sydney beach, has been on the menu the whole time.
Bluestone Lane, multiple Manhattan locations. Founded by Nick Stone in 2013. The Nolita and SoHo locations, along with a much loved branch in the courtyard of the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest on the Upper East Side, made Australian coffee a New York default.
Little Collins, 667 Lexington Avenue. Opened by Leon Unglik in 2013 in Midtown. Named for a street in Melbourne. Home to the first Modbar installation in New York. Aimed squarely at the office worker who wanted Melbourne coffee on the way to a meeting.
Banter, 643 Hudson Street and 169 Sullivan Street. Opened in late 2016 by Nick Duckworth and Josh Evans, with a second West Village location following in 2019. Banter became an employee owned business in early 2023 when the founders stepped away, with staff granted an initial 10 percent stake.
Mud Australia, 226 Mulberry Street. The Sydney born porcelain studio opened a Nolita storefront, selling handmade dinnerware in pastel colours that show up in half the Australian cafés in the neighbourhood.
The American Australian Association, 50 Broadway, Suite 2003. Founded in 1948 by Sir Keith Murdoch, the AAA is the longest running and largest non profit dedicated to relations between Australia and the United States. It runs a business council, scholarships, and the annual gala that draws most of the Australian executive community in New York.
Where they came from
The Australian community in Nolita is not regional in the way earlier Manhattan immigrant communities were. There is no chain migration from a single county or village. The arrivals are graduates of the University of Sydney, Melbourne, UNSW, ANU, UQ, and Monash, fanning out from the major Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. The Sydney to New York and Melbourne to New York flights are direct and constant.
The career paths concentrate in four sectors. Finance and corporate law fill Midtown and the Financial District, with E-3 holders working at the major banks, hedge funds, and law firms. Tech and media fill the same payroll lists. Fashion brings designers, buyers, and PR executives into SoHo and the Garment District. Hospitality, the most visible sector, fills Nolita’s cafés, kitchens, and bars with chefs, baristas, and front of house staff who often arrive on a working holiday and stay on an E-3 once they find a sponsor.
Nolita today
The Australian scene in Nolita is a different kind of neighbourhood from the Italian or Irish or Jewish enclaves that preceded it. It is not a settlement community. There are no Australian parishes, no Australian schools, no second or third generation Australian American families holding leases that have passed through three decades. It is a working community of E-3 visa holders, dual citizens, and serial expats. People rotate through, often returning home after five or ten years.
What that means in practice is that Little Australia is a pattern rather than a population. The community renews itself faster than older diaspora neighbourhoods did. A flat white at Two Hands on a Tuesday morning will still be poured by an Australian. The Australian behind the counter, though, will probably be a different person from the one who poured it three years ago.
The cultural footprint, on the other hand, is permanent. Australian café culture is now New York café culture. The flat white is on every menu. The avocado on sourdough is no longer foreign. The bright, plant filled brunch room is the template that newer cafés copy. When Australians arrive in New York now, they do not have to import the format anymore. It is already here, waiting for them.
Australia Day, 26 January, is the one fixed point on the calendar. Each year the Australian Consulate, the American Australian Association, and a rotating list of cafés and bars host gatherings across the city. The flag goes up at Two Hands. A Sydney accent at the next table is the only confirmation anyone needs that they are in the right place.
Frequently asked questions
Why did Australians settle in Nolita?
The first Australian café in Nolita, Ruby’s on Mulberry Street, opened in 2003 because the founders thought the low rise streets reminded them of Paddington in Sydney. Once it was established, new arrivals were drawn to the same blocks by word of mouth, and a cluster of Australian owned cafés, shops, and bars followed. The 2005 E-3 visa accelerated the flow.
Is Nolita still Australian today?
Yes, but in a contemporary expat sense rather than a multi generational enclave. The Australian community is concentrated around Mott, Mulberry, Elizabeth, and Prince Streets, but most residents are E-3 visa holders or working professionals who rotate through over five to ten year stints rather than putting down generational roots.
What are the most famous Australian landmarks in Nolita?
Two Hands at 164 Mott Street, Ruby’s at 219 Mulberry Street, and Bluestone Lane’s SoHo and Nolita locations are the three café anchors. Mud Australia at 226 Mulberry Street and the wider New York Australian institutions, including the American Australian Association at 50 Broadway, sit alongside them.
Where in Australia did the Nolita Australians come from?
Most arrived from the major Australian cities, primarily Sydney and Melbourne, with significant numbers from Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. There is no single regional chain migration of the kind that defined earlier Manhattan immigrant communities. The flow is graduate and professional, driven by E-3 visas and direct flights.
When did Australians first arrive in Nolita?
Ruby’s, the first Australian owned café in Nolita, opened in 2003. The Australian presence grew rapidly after the E-3 visa was created in May 2005, and the café boom that defined the neighbourhood took off after Bluestone Lane launched in 2013 and Two Hands followed in 2014.
What is the E-3 visa?
The E-3 is a United States work visa available only to Australian citizens, created in 2005 as part of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. It allows up to 10,500 Australians per year to work in a specialty occupation in the United States. The visa lasts two years and renews indefinitely, which is why so many Australians in New York have stayed for a decade or more.
If your family’s story passed through Nolita, or any of the places Australians have made home in the United States, Atlas of Home can trace the journey. From a city in New South Wales or Victoria, to a flat in Lower Manhattan, to wherever you are reading this now.