On a Saturday morning, the stretch of Washington Avenue between Sixth and Sixteenth streets smells of star anise and grilled lemongrass, and the awnings read in two alphabets at once. This is Little Saigon, the heart of the Vietnamese in Philadelphia, a place built not around a ceremonial gate but around strip malls, parking lots, and the patient labour of refugees who arrived with almost nothing.
The Place
Little Saigon sits in South Philadelphia, centred on the intersection of South Eighth Street and Washington Avenue, in and around the Passyunk Square neighbourhood, ZIP code 19147. The avenue is a wide, working commercial artery, once lined with lumberyards and building-supply firms, that the Vietnamese gradually reclaimed storefront by storefront.
It is not a tidy enclave. Washington Avenue still shares its blocks with Mexican taquerias, old Italian-American shops, the legacy of communities like the Italians in South Philadelphia, and Cambodian, Laotian, and Chinese businesses. The boundaries are commercial rather than political, drawn in shopfront signage and in the queue outside a pho house.
What holds it together is the avenue itself: a corridor where a family could buy a building cheaply, open a market, and stay. The architecture is plain, the parking lots are wide, and the signage does the work that ceremonial arches do elsewhere.
Step inside any of the plazas and the impression sharpens. Tanks of live fish, walls of dried noodles and shrimp paste, a bakery counter stacked with banh mi, a pho house exhaling steam onto the pavement. It is a neighbourhood you read by smell and sound as much as by street sign.
How It Became Vietnamese
The fall of Saigon and the first refugees
The story begins with the fall of Saigon in April 1975 and the wave of refugees that followed. South Vietnamese who had backed the losing side fled, and the United States resettled them across the country, often in cities with cheap housing and willing sponsors.
Pennsylvania took in many of them. Census records show at least 7,000 Vietnamese immigrants arrived in the state between 1975 and 1980, and most settled in Philadelphia. Much of the early processing happened at Fort Indiantown Gap, the military base in Dauphin County that received tens of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees in the mid-1970s.
By the early 1980s, roughly 12,000 refugees had found work and sponsors across Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg, making Pennsylvania one of the country’s leading refugee destinations.
The boat people and the second wave
The first arrivals were soon followed by the “boat people,” the men, women, and children who escaped Vietnam by sea between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. Many spent months or years in refugee camps in Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Thailand before sponsorship brought them to the United States.
Their journeys were rarely direct. One Philadelphia family’s story, recorded by state historians, runs like this: a father rescued at sea and processed through a camp in Japan reached the city in 1980, and his wife followed in 1985, sponsored by siblings already working here. Chain by chain, relative by relative, the community grew.
Buying the avenue
The decisive turn came in the 1990s, when Washington Avenue offered something rare in a growing city: affordable property. The old industrial corridor was tired and cheap, and Vietnamese families began buying buildings to open their own businesses.
Hoa Binh Plaza, the first Vietnamese shopping plaza, opened in 1990 at Sixteenth Street and Washington Avenue. Its name means “Peace Plaza.” Wing Phat Plaza followed later in the decade, between Eleventh and Twelfth streets. In 1998, two more arrived, New World Plaza and the 1st Oriental Market, on either side of Sixth and Washington, and they dwarfed what had come before.
These were not ornamental Chinatown gates. They were suburban-style strip malls with parking lots, a form that echoed Vietnamese commercial districts in Westminster, California and Falls Church, Virginia, the pattern catalogued by historians of Little Saigon, Philadelphia. The shape was practical, and it worked, much as it did for the Vietnamese in San Jose, California and the Vietnamese in Houston, Texas.
A community puts down roots
As the businesses multiplied, so did the institutions. On Christmas Day in 1994, members of the Asian American Buddhist Association of Philadelphia completed the purchase of an abandoned building, the former home of the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz, for 130,000 dollars, and turned it into Chua Bo De, the first Vietnamese Buddhist temple in the city.
Catholic Vietnamese, a large share of the refugees from the south, found homes in established South Philadelphia parishes. The community organised around faith, food, and family, and by 2013 the Vietnamese had become the largest ethnic group in the Washington Avenue and Passyunk Square section of South Philadelphia.
That rooting showed in small, durable ways. A grandmother could now buy the right herbs without leaving the neighbourhood. Children could attend Sunday services in their parents’ language. The avenue stopped being a place where refugees merely worked and became a place where a Vietnamese Philadelphia lived.
The Landmarks
Pho 75, 1122 Washington Avenue. A no-frills, cash-only pho parlour with a single obsession: enormous steaming bowls of beef noodle soup. The broth is light and herbal and widely judged among the best in the city, and the spare dining room fills with families on weekend mornings.
Nam Phuong, 1100 Washington Avenue. A large, family-friendly restaurant with a sprawling menu of classic Vietnamese dishes. It is especially known for its banh mi, built on a house-made baguette, crisp outside and soft within, layered with pate, lemongrass chicken, or prawn patty.
Chua Bo De, 1114 South 13th Street. The first Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Philadelphia, opened in 1994 in a former jazz club near Washington Avenue. Its pagoda-style facade is flanked by gold-and-red dragons, and on Sunday mornings the hall fills for worship. A mural by Shira Walinsky, “The Journey: From Vietnam to the United States,” recounts the refugees’ passage.
Wing Phat Plaza, between 11th and 12th on Washington Avenue. One of the surviving Vietnamese plazas, a cluster of pho restaurants, a dim sum house, a Vietnamese supermarket, a bubble tea counter, and an importer that seems to stock everything. On weekends its parking lot is the busiest patch of asphalt on the avenue.
1st Oriental Market and New World Plaza, around Sixth and Washington. Opened in 1998, these two developments faced each other across the avenue and signalled that Little Saigon had arrived in earnest. Their grocery aisles stock the herbs, fish sauce, and rice paper that anchor a Vietnamese kitchen.
Hoa Binh Plaza, 16th Street and Washington Avenue. The first Vietnamese plaza, opened in 1990, home for three decades to the Sieu Thi Big 8 grocery and Nam Son Bakery, whose banh mi had a citywide following. In 2020 its tenants were evicted to make way for housing, and the building now stands as a quiet marker of how much the avenue has changed.
VietLead, serving Greater Philadelphia and South Jersey. A grassroots organisation founded in 2015 to address the inequities facing Vietnamese American youth and the wider Southeast Asian community. Its OurRoots youth programme blends political education, leadership development, and community organising, and it led the campaign to save Hoa Binh Plaza.
Where They Came From
The Vietnamese of South Philadelphia trace their roots largely to the former South Vietnam, the region governed from Saigon before 1975. The first refugees were people connected to the old southern government, the military, or American operations, the families with the most to fear when the war ended.
Later arrivals, the boat people of the 1980s, came from across the south and centre of the country, fishing villages and provincial towns as much as cities. Their paths ran through refugee camps in Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Thailand, and only then to Pennsylvania.
What drew so many to Philadelphia was not the climate but the chain: a relative already settled, a parish or agency willing to sponsor, and an avenue where a family could afford to buy in. Once that pattern set, each new household made the next one easier, the same chain that carried the Vietnamese in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and the Vietnamese in Irvine, California.
Philadelphia Today
Little Saigon is thriving and under pressure at the same time. The Asian population of the South Philadelphia East district, which takes in Washington Avenue, grew by 277 percent between 1990 and 2010, and the avenue remains one of the largest Vietnamese commercial corridors on the East Coast.
But the same affordability that let the community buy in has now made the land valuable. The loss of Hoa Binh Plaza in 2020, demolished for housing despite years of protest, became the symbol of a wider squeeze, and gentrification is steadily raising the cost of staying.
The response has been to organise rather than retreat. Groups like VietLead have turned the fight over the avenue into a fight over self-determination, and even as some shops close, others nearby keep thriving. The Vietnamese in Philadelphia built this place once from cheap industrial blocks, and they are determined not to be erased from it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the Vietnamese community in Philadelphia?
The Vietnamese in Philadelphia are concentrated in South Philadelphia along Washington Avenue, in an area known as Little Saigon, centred near Eighth Street and Washington Avenue in and around Passyunk Square (ZIP 19147). The avenue between Sixth and Sixteenth streets is the main commercial spine.
Why did Vietnamese refugees settle in Philadelphia?
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the United States resettled Vietnamese refugees across the country, and Pennsylvania became one of the leading destinations, with many processed at Fort Indiantown Gap. Cheap housing, sponsoring churches and agencies, and family chain migration drew the Vietnamese to Philadelphia in particular.
What is Little Saigon in Philadelphia?
Little Saigon is the Vietnamese commercial district along Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia. It grew in the 1990s through strip-mall plazas such as Hoa Binh Plaza, Wing Phat Plaza, and New World Plaza, rather than around a ceremonial gateway, and is one of the largest Vietnamese enclaves on the East Coast.
What are the best Vietnamese restaurants on Washington Avenue?
Long-standing favourites include Pho 75 at 1122 Washington Avenue, famous for its beef noodle soup, and Nam Phuong at 1100 Washington Avenue, known for its banh mi. The corridor also holds numerous pho houses, bakeries, and Vietnamese markets clustered in the avenue’s plazas.
What happened to Hoa Binh Plaza?
Hoa Binh Plaza, the first Vietnamese plaza in Philadelphia, opened in 1990 at Sixteenth and Washington and housed shops including Nam Son Bakery and the Sieu Thi Big 8 grocery. After a developer bought the site, all eight tenants were evicted in 2020 and the plaza closed, despite community protests, making it a symbol of gentrification on the avenue.
How many Vietnamese people live in Philadelphia?
Estimates have varied widely by source and method, but Philadelphia holds one of the largest Vietnamese communities on the East Coast and the largest in Pennsylvania. By 2013 the Vietnamese were the largest ethnic group in the Washington Avenue and Passyunk Square section of South Philadelphia.
If your family’s story passed through Philadelphia, or any of the places Vietnamese have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a refugee camp in the Philippines or a fishing village in the south of Vietnam, to a strip mall on Washington Avenue, to wherever you are now.