Muslims have been called many things lately in America. New Yorkers, however, have had their own word for them, going back more than a century:

Neighbors.

Historians have long known about Little Syria, a flourishing community in Lower Manhattan, south of what is now the World Trade Center. But most evidence, including the landmark former St. George’s Syrian Catholic Church, spoke to its having been an overwhelmingly Christian enclave.

Today, evidence is coming to light that Muslims not only lived in Little Syria but worshiped there, too, in a mosque — or masjid — on Rector Street, between Greenwich and Washington Streets (just around the corner from St. George’s).

“Muslims are not a recent, foreign intrusion that should generate fear, but are an ever-present feature of the American — and specifically New York — fabric,” said Todd Fine, president of the Washington Street Historical Society and a doctoral candidate in history at the City University of New York.