Finns, Lithuanians and Estonians
The smaller Nordic and Baltic communities, from Finntown to the Estonian House.
Nordic New York, 1910
In 1910 about 100,000 New Yorkers had Nordic roots, half of them Swedish. They worked the docks and shipyards and lived near the water in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Finntown, Sunset Park
Finnish immigrants settled around 40th Street in Sunset Park. In 1916 they built Alku and Alku Toinen on 43rd Street, the first nonprofit housing cooperatives in New York. By 1930 about 21,000 New Yorkers had Finnish roots.
Lithuanian Brooklyn, 1930
Lithuanians were the largest Baltic group, about 31,000 people of Lithuanian stock in 1930. Their churches, halls and newspapers clustered in Williamsburg and nearby Maspeth.
Estonian New York today
Estonian ancestry appears in these census tables only from 2000. Today about 1,100 New Yorkers report it, most of them in Manhattan. The community's home since 1946 is the Estonian House on East 34th Street.
Today
About 72,000 New Yorkers report Nordic or Baltic roots today, among them 13,000 Lithuanians, 3,000 Latvians and 4,700 Finns. There is no Little Norway anymore: they live all across the city.
Where New York Came From: a map of NYC immigration and ancestry, 1910 to today