On a Saturday morning along West Maple Road, the line at Shatila stretches past the glass cases of baklava and knafeh, and the conversation in it drifts between English and a soft Levantine Arabic. This is the other Lebanese Michigan. Not the working-class Arab heartland of Dearborn, but the Lebanese in West Bloomfield, Oakland County’s lake-laced township where Maronite and Orthodox Christian families who once crowded Detroit’s east side now live behind manicured lawns, send their children to private academies, and order their pastries by the kilo.
The Place
West Bloomfield Township sits in the northwest corner of Oakland County, established in 1833 and known locally as the lake township for the dozens of lakes inside its 31 square miles, among them Cass Lake, Pine Lake, and Orchard Lake. The 2020 census counted 65,888 residents, and the township has long ranked among Michigan’s most prosperous, with a median family income that crossed six figures more than a decade ago.
Its main arteries, Orchard Lake Road and West Maple Road, run thick with upscale shops, medical offices, and restaurants. Seven school districts serve the township, more than any other municipality in the county.
It is best known as the heart of metro Detroit’s Jewish community, but West Bloomfield is also where a quieter Middle Eastern professional class settled: Lebanese Christians, and Chaldeans from Iraq, who built churches, cultural centres, and a food scene a short drive from one another.
How It Became Lebanese
The Lebanese were the first Middle Eastern people to reach Detroit, and they arrived earlier than almost anyone realises.
The east side and the auto plants
The first Lebanese settlers came to the Detroit area in the early 1870s, most of them Christians: Maronites in union with Rome, Melkites, and Eastern Orthodox. A Detroit Free Press article in February 1900 described the city’s “Colony of Syrians,” a community of 75 to 100 people, mostly Lebanese Maronites. The label “Syrian” was the catch-all of the era, applied to immigrants from a Lebanon that was then part of Ottoman Syria.
They began as peddlers, working door to door with packs of dry goods, then drifted toward the factories. Many of the early arrivals clustered downtown near the Lafayette and Congress streets, and along the east side close to the Jefferson Avenue auto plants. By 1930 there were roughly 9,000 Arabic-speakers in Detroit, about 6,000 of them of Lebanese and Syrian origin.
A church before a neighbourhood
The community organised around faith long before it organised around any single suburb. When the Lebanese Maronites of Detroit grew numerous enough, a request went to the Maronite Patriarchate in Lebanon, and the first Maronite parish in the city, St. Maron, was dedicated on East Congress Street on April 30, 1916. The same year, on January 30, 1916, the Orthodox families organised the St. George Syrian Orthodox Society of Detroit.
These two congregations, Maronite and Antiochian Orthodox, became the twin poles of Christian Lebanese life in the area, and both would eventually follow their members out of the city.
The move north
By the second generation the trajectory was clear. The children of the peddlers and factory hands became doctors, engineers, lawyers, and businesspeople, and as they prospered they wanted what affluent Detroiters of every background wanted after the 1960s: space, status, and good schools. They moved north, into Oakland County.
By around 1951 the metropolitan area held perhaps 50,000 people of Lebanese and Syrian descent, and the professional, largely Christian wing of that population gravitated toward the northern suburbs rather than toward Dearborn. West Bloomfield, with its lakes and its reputation for schools, became one of the destinations of choice, alongside neighbouring Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, and a Troy that was drawing its own professional newcomers, including the Indians of Troy.
Two Lebanese Michigans
This is the crucial distinction. Dearborn’s enormous Arab community, which grew up around the Ford Rouge plant in the 1920s, is heavily Muslim and includes a large Shia Lebanese population that arrived in successive waves through the late twentieth century, much of it working-class. The Lebanese of West Bloomfield are largely the descendants of the earlier Christian migration, Maronite and Orthodox, who reached the suburbs by way of education and the professions.
The two communities share a homeland, a cuisine, and a language, but they occupy different worlds: one anchored on Warren Avenue among the Lebanese of Dearborn, the other along Orchard Lake Road and Maple, twenty-five miles to the northwest. The same split between earlier Christian arrivals and later Muslim migration shaped the Lebanese of Toledo across the Ohio line.
The Chaldean neighbours
The Lebanese did not move to West Bloomfield alone. The township also became a centre of the Chaldean community, Catholics from Iraq who speak a form of Aramaic, and in 2004 the township opened the Chaldean Cultural Center, billed as the largest of its kind in the United States. Lebanese and Chaldean families often share the same churches’ calendars, the same grocers, and the same banquet halls, even as each keeps its own clergy and traditions.
The Landmarks
Shatila Bakery, 5741 W Maple Rd, West Bloomfield, MI 48322. Riad Shatila founded Shatila Food Products in Dearborn in 1979, baking Lebanese sweets as a labour of love. The West Bloomfield branch, the company’s second, brought the cases of baklava, maamoul, and the bakery’s own pistachio and kashta ice cream north to Oakland County, and it remains a Saturday-morning institution.
Orchard Lake Mezza, 4189 Orchard Lake Rd, West Bloomfield, MI 48323. A Lebanese restaurant on the township’s main commercial spine, serving the full mezza table: hummus, tabbouleh, fattoush, shawarma, and charcoal kebabs, with banquet and catering rooms that handle the baptisms, engagements, and graduation parties that hold a diaspora together.
St. Maron Maronite Catholic Church, 11466 Kercheval Ave, Detroit. The mother parish of Lebanese Catholic Detroit, dedicated in 1916 on East Congress and relocated to the corner of Kercheval and St. Jean in 1966. Many West Bloomfield families trace their Michigan story to a baptism or wedding in its sanctuary, even after moving far to the northwest.
St. Sharbel Maronite Catholic Church, Macomb County. Founded out of the same Detroit Maronite community, St. Sharbel grew from a 1993 building into the largest Maronite parish in Michigan, dedicated anew in 2018. Named for Lebanon’s beloved hermit-saint, it draws Maronite families from across the metro region for the Qurbono, the Maronite liturgy.
St. George Greek Orthodox Church, 43816 Woodward Ave, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302. A short drive from West Bloomfield, this Orthodox parish sits on Woodward Avenue and serves the Eastern Christian families of the northern suburbs. For Antiochian and Greek Orthodox Lebanese alike, the cluster of Orthodox churches around Bloomfield and Troy anchors a faith carried from the eastern Mediterranean.
The Chaldean Cultural Center, West Bloomfield. Opened in 2004 and described as the largest of its kind in the country, the centre documents the Aramaic-speaking Christians of Iraq. It stands as the most visible institution of the broader Middle Eastern Christian presence in the township that the Lebanese helped pioneer.
Orchard Lake Road and West Maple Road. Not a single building but the two streets that frame the community: medical and dental practices run by second- and third-generation Lebanese professionals, the bakeries and grocers, the real-estate offices, all within a few minutes of the lakes that gave the township its name.
Where They Came From
Most West Bloomfield Lebanese families trace their roots to the Christian villages of Mount Lebanon and the towns of the north, the strongholds of the Maronite Church, along with the Orthodox communities of the Koura and the coastal cities. These were the regions that sent the first peddlers to Detroit in the 1870s and 1880s, and chain migration kept the link alive for a century: a cousin sponsored, a sister married, a village reassembled street by street in Michigan.
Later arrivals came fleeing the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 to 1990, which scattered Christian families across the diaspora and reinforced the established communities of metro Detroit. Many of those who came in those decades had the education and capital to skip the factory floor entirely and settle directly in the prosperous suburbs.
West Bloomfield Today
The Lebanese in West Bloomfield are no longer an immigrant community in any visible sense. They are surgeons and attorneys, car dealers and developers, the third and fourth generations of families that started with a pack of goods on Detroit’s east side. Their Arabic is often softer than their grandparents’, their Maronite or Orthodox faith threaded through Sunday liturgies and the great cycle of weddings and funerals.
What endures is the food and the church. The cases at Shatila still empty out on holiday weekends. Orchard Lake Mezza still caters the engagement parties. The drive to St. Maron in Detroit or to the Orthodox parishes of Bloomfield and Troy still marks the rhythm of the year.
It is an affluent, assimilated, and quietly proud community, easy to overlook precisely because it blends so well into one of Michigan’s wealthiest townships. But the names on the medical-office doors and the baptismal registers tell the longer story: of a people who came as the first Middle Easterners in Detroit, worked their way from peddling to the professions, and turned a lake township into a Lebanese home.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are the Lebanese in West Bloomfield the same community as the Lebanese in Dearborn?
No. The Lebanese in West Bloomfield are largely Christian, Maronite and Orthodox, descended from the early professional migration that moved north into Oakland County. Dearborn’s much larger Lebanese community is heavily Muslim, including a substantial Shia population that grew up around the auto plants and arrived in later working-class waves. You can read more about the Lebanese in Dearborn separately.
When did Lebanese people first settle in metro Detroit?
The first Lebanese settlers reached the Detroit area in the early 1870s, most of them Christians who began as door-to-door peddlers before moving into factory work. By 1900 a Detroit “Colony of Syrians,” mostly Lebanese Maronites, was already established downtown.
What churches serve the Lebanese in West Bloomfield?
Lebanese Maronites have long been served by St. Maron in Detroit, dedicated in 1916, and by St. Sharbel in Macomb County, the largest Maronite parish in Michigan. Antiochian and Greek Orthodox Lebanese families attend Orthodox parishes clustered around Bloomfield Hills and Troy.
Why is West Bloomfield so affluent?
West Bloomfield developed rapidly after the 1960s as professionals moved out of inner Detroit, drawn by its lakes, large lots, and strong schools. Its median family income crossed six figures more than a decade ago, making it one of the wealthiest townships in Oakland County.
Where can I find Lebanese food in West Bloomfield?
Shatila Bakery on West Maple Road sells Lebanese pastries, baklava, and house-made ice cream, while Orchard Lake Mezza on Orchard Lake Road serves a full Lebanese menu of mezza, shawarma, and charcoal kebabs. Both are central gathering points for the Lebanese in West Bloomfield.
Is there a difference between the Lebanese and Chaldean communities in West Bloomfield?
Yes. Chaldeans are Catholic Christians from Iraq who speak a form of Aramaic, and West Bloomfield is home to the Chaldean Cultural Center, opened in 2004. The Lebanese are a distinct community from Lebanon, though the two often share neighbourhoods, grocers, and the township’s broader Middle Eastern Christian life.
If your family’s story passed through West Bloomfield, or any of the places Lebanese have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village in Mount Lebanon to a lakeside township in Oakland County, to wherever you are now.