On a single stretch of Starling Avenue in the eastern Bronx, the shop signs read in Bangla. Sweet shops, halal butchers, sari fashion houses, tutoring centres and tax offices crowd two blocks that the city itself renamed Bangla Bazaar. This is the heart of the Bangladeshis in Bronx, New York, a community that grew from a handful of families in the early 1990s into one of the largest Bangladeshi neighbourhoods in the United States.
The Place
Parkchester sits in the east-central Bronx, a planned community of 171 buildings and more than 12,000 apartments arranged around a central green called the Metropolitan Oval. It was built by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company between 1939 and 1942 as a self-contained city within a city, on 129 acres bought from the Roman Catholic Church, with its own shops, schools and the first Macy’s branch outside Herald Square.
The architect was Richmond Shreve, whose firm had drawn the Empire State Building, and the design promised orderly, affordable family living: red-brick towers of seven to thirteen storeys, landscaped courtyards, and a shopping centre of half a million square feet folded into the residential blocks. By 1943 all 12,271 apartments were rented.
For its first decades the development was, by company policy, whites only. People of colour could not rent there until 1968. The neighbourhood that emerged was heavily Irish and Jewish, working families drawn to affordable rents and the orderly red-brick quadrants around the Oval.
Today the same buildings house something Metropolitan Life never imagined. Walk east along Starling Avenue toward Castle Hill and the storefronts switch to Bangla script, and the call to prayer carries from converted shopfront mosques.
How It Became Bangladeshi
A lottery opens the door
Bangladeshis began arriving in New York in significant numbers in the early 1990s, after the United States opened the diversity visa lottery. The programme awarded immigrant visas to applicants from countries with historically low migration to America, and Bangladesh was among the largest beneficiaries.
The first arrivals to Parkchester came in ones and twos. By one account there were only about ten Bangladeshi families in the area in 1991. They were drawn by the same things that had drawn the Irish and Jewish tenants before them: large, affordable apartments, reliable subway access on the 6 train, and a quiet, family-oriented grid.
Chain migration takes hold
What turned a handful of families into a neighbourhood was chain migration. A lottery winner would settle, find work, and after the qualifying years bring over a spouse, then parents, then siblings, nieces and nephews and former neighbours from home.
The pattern compounded quickly. By 2010 the Bangladeshi population counted in the immediate Parkchester area had passed 4,000, up from those ten families two decades earlier. Bilal Islam, whose family arrived in the late 1980s when only two small grocery stores served the community, watched the strip fill in store by store.
The arithmetic of the lottery helps explain the speed. The diversity programme awarded tens of thousands of immigrant visas to Bangladeshi applicants over the years, and each winner who landed in Parkchester became a fixed point that relatives could aim for. A neighbourhood with cheap rent, a direct subway line and a growing cluster of Bengali faces was self-reinforcing: every new family made the next family’s arrival easier.
The shops follow the families
Through the 1990s and 2000s the commercial transformation accelerated. Where new arrivals once travelled to other boroughs for Bengali groceries, entrepreneurs began opening on Starling Avenue itself. Bangladeshi-owned businesses along the strip grew enormously in a single decade.
The stores were never only grocers. The strip filled with restaurants, clothing shops, pharmacies, tax preparers, driving schools and tutoring centres, a full service economy run by and for the community. Shazal Shil, who arrived in Parkchester around 2007, found many Bangladeshi neighbours but few businesses that served them, and joined the wave of owners who changed that.
The city draws the line
In 2008 the New York City Council formally co-named the stretch of Starling Avenue between Castle Hill Avenue and Unionport Road as Bangla Bazaar, recognising the dozens of Bangladeshi retailers and restaurants that had taken root. The name made official what residents already called the area: Little Bangladesh.
The community also reshaped its houses of worship. Where the area had once held a synagogue and Catholic parishes, converted storefronts and repurposed buildings became mosques. The largest concentrations of Bangladeshi families clustered in Parkchester and neighbouring Castle Hill, gathering around the Parkchester Jame Masjid, one of the earliest mosques in the area.
From immigrants to office-holders
As the community matured, its members entered civic life. Mohammed Mujumder became the longest-serving member of Bronx Community Board 9 and its first chairman of Bangladeshi descent, a milestone for a community that had arrived only a generation earlier.
The borough’s Bangladeshi presence is now substantial. Roughly 20,000 people of Bangladeshi origin live in the Bronx, part of a citywide population that passed 105,000 by 2023. In Bronx Community District 9, which includes Parkchester and Soundview, Bengali is spoken in more than 12,200 households, about 7.7 per cent of the district.
The Landmarks
Bangla Bazaar, Starling Avenue between Castle Hill Avenue and Unionport Road. The co-named corridor is the spine of the community. The Bangla Bazaar Business Association counts roughly 45 storefronts along the core two-block stretch and as many as 80 Bangladeshi businesses in the wider area. It is the closest thing the Bronx has to a Bengali main street.
Parkchester Jame Masjid, 1203 Virginia Avenue. One of the earliest mosques to serve the community, it anchors religious life for families across Parkchester and Castle Hill. The Friday prayer draws crowds that overflow the prayer hall, a measure of how far the congregation has grown since the first families arrived.
Al-Aqsa Halal Meat and Supermarket, 2109 Starling Avenue. A halal butcher and South Asian grocery on the Bangla Bazaar strip, it is a staple stop for families stocking up on fish, spices and fresh meat slaughtered to halal standard. Stores like it replaced the long subway trips earlier arrivals once made for a taste of home.
Poshora Market, Starling Avenue. One of the original Bangladeshi grocery stores from the community’s earliest days, Poshora is still trading. It is a living link to the period when only a couple of shops on the avenue carried Bengali goods.
New Five Star, Unionport Road. A cafe and restaurant owned by Mostaque Ahmed, known as Rafiq, it serves the home cooking that anchors the strip’s social life. “It feels like we’re in Little Bangladesh,” Ahmed has said of the corner he works.
Golden Palace Catering and Banquet Hall, Unionport Road. Owned by Bilal Islam, the hall hosts the weddings, Eid gatherings and community functions that knit the neighbourhood together. For a community built on extended families brought over one by one, the banquet hall is where those families gather in force.
The Metropolitan Oval, centre of Parkchester. The grassy heart of the original 1940s development, ringed by red-brick quadrants and centred on a fountain designed for the 1939 World’s Fair, remains the geographic anchor everyone shares, Bengali and non-Bengali alike.
Where They Came From
The Bangladeshis who settled in Parkchester came overwhelmingly through the diversity visa lottery and the family reunification that followed it. The lottery, opened in the early 1990s, was decisive: it gave applicants from a country with little prior migration to America a path that simply had not existed before.
Within Bangladesh, the migration drew on regions with long traditions of going abroad, particularly the Sylhet division in the country’s north-east, alongside districts such as Noakhali and Chittagong. Sylhetis in particular had a deep history of overseas migration, and that habit of departure fed directly into the lottery cohorts.
Once a few households were established, the rest followed by family ties rather than chance. A single lottery winner could, over a decade, become the anchor for a dozen relatives, which is why the Parkchester community grew so fast and stayed so tightly bound to specific home districts.
Parkchester Today
Parkchester today is one of the most recognisable Bangladeshi neighbourhoods in the country, and the Bangla Bazaar strip has begun spilling outward, with new shops opening along the 6 train toward Castle Hill Avenue, Zerega Avenue and Westchester Square.
The community is also putting down civic roots. Its members sit on the community board, run business associations, and mark the calendar publicly: Eid prayers fill the mosques, and Chaand Raat, the night before Eid, turns the avenue into a late-night shopping festival of henna, bangles and new clothes.
It is not without strain. The growth has at times brought friction with longer-settled neighbours, and the community has known grief, as when Parkchester resident and NYPD officer Didarul Islam was killed in a Midtown shooting in July 2025 and posthumously promoted to detective. The neighbourhood that mourned him was, by then, unmistakably its own place: a Bengali quarter inside Metropolitan Life’s old red-brick city, written into the street signs and the shop windows alike.
For a sense of how Bangladeshi New York spreads across the map, the community here connects to the larger hubs in Jackson Heights and Kensington, Brooklyn, and even to the Midwest enclave of Hamtramck, Michigan. The Bronx itself holds many such stories, from the Irish of Woodlawn to the Italians of Arthur Avenue, each a chapter in the same borough’s long history of arrival.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do the Bangladeshis in Bronx, New York live?
The Bangladeshis in Bronx, New York are concentrated in Parkchester and neighbouring Castle Hill, centred on the Bangla Bazaar corridor of Starling Avenue between Castle Hill Avenue and Unionport Road. The community is also spreading along the 6 train toward Zerega Avenue and Westchester Square.
Why is it called Bangla Bazaar?
In 2008 the New York City Council formally co-named the stretch of Starling Avenue between Castle Hill Avenue and Unionport Road as Bangla Bazaar. The name recognised the dozens of Bangladeshi groceries, restaurants and shops that had taken root there. Residents also call the area Little Bangladesh.
When did Bangladeshis settle in Parkchester?
Bangladeshis began arriving in significant numbers in the early 1990s after the United States opened the diversity visa lottery. There were only about ten Bangladeshi families in the Parkchester area in 1991, a number that grew past 4,000 by 2010 through chain migration.
How many Bangladeshis live in the Bronx?
Roughly 20,000 people of Bangladeshi origin live in the Bronx, part of a New York City population that passed 105,000 by 2023. In Bronx Community District 9, which includes Parkchester and Soundview, Bengali is spoken in more than 12,200 households, about 7.7 per cent of the district.
Where in Bangladesh did the community come from?
The migration drew heavily on the Sylhet division in north-east Bangladesh, a region with a long history of overseas migration, alongside districts such as Noakhali and Chittagong. Most arrived first through the diversity visa lottery, then brought family members through reunification.
What can you see in the Bangladeshi Bronx today?
Along Bangla Bazaar you will find halal butchers, Bengali grocers, sari fashion houses, sweet shops, restaurants and the Parkchester Jame Masjid. The community marks Eid publicly, and the night before Eid, Chaand Raat, turns the avenue into a late-night shopping festival.
If your family’s story passed through Parkchester, or any of the places Bangladeshis have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the rivers of Sylhet to a renamed strip of Starling Avenue, to wherever you are now.