Armenian America Today

VII.1How Many Armenian Americans?

Counting Armenian Americans is harder than it sounds. Armenian identity may show up in government data through ancestry, birthplace, language or religion, or not at all, and many people of mixed heritage do not report it. U.S. Census surveys have recorded roughly 470,000 to 520,000 people of Armenian ancestry.^[1,2] Community organizations put the real number at 1.5 million or more, which would make the United States home to one of the largest Armenian communities outside Armenia.^[2]

California is the center of Armenian America. More than half of the Census-counted Armenian population lives in the state.^[1]

VII.2Fresno and the Central Valley

Fresno is one of the oldest Armenian communities in the country. Its farm economy offered work in vineyards, orchards and packinghouses, and many Armenian families moved from farm labor to owning land, then to small businesses and the professions. The city had an Armenian Library Union as early as 1892.^[3]

Fresno is the hometown of William Saroyan and Kirk Kerkorian, and it was the American home of General Andranik, who settled there with his wife Nevarte in 1922.^[4,5,6] Its Ararat Cemetery holds the graves of Soghomon Tehlirian and half of Saroyan's ashes, and was Andranik's first resting place.^[7,4,6] Read their profiles.

VII.3New England: Worcester, Watertown and Boston

Worcester and Watertown, Massachusetts, were the cradle of Armenian America. Their factories and mills drew workers from the Ottoman Empire and later from across the diaspora. Worcester is home to the first Armenian place of worship in America (1881) and the first Armenian Apostolic church (1891).^[3]

Watertown grew into one of the most important Armenian cultural centers in the country, with churches, schools, publishers and organizations. It is home to the Armenian Museum of America, which began as a collection of books and artifacts in 1971 and opened to the public in 1985.^[8] The painter Arshile Gorky, born Vostanik Manoug Adoian, arrived in Watertown in 1920 as a teenage genocide survivor and lived with relatives there for four years before moving to New York, where he became a major figure in American modernism and a forerunner of Abstract Expressionism.^[9,10,11]

The Boston–Cambridge area remains a hub for Armenian studies, philanthropy, higher education and biotechnology. It is the base of Noubar Afeyan, founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and co-founder of Moderna.^[12,13] General Dro spent his final months in Boston and was buried there in 1956.^[14]

VII.4Los Angeles and Glendale

Greater Los Angeles is now the largest Armenian population center in the United States.^[15] Armenian life first centered in East Hollywood. On October 6, 2000, the Los Angeles City Council designated part of the area as Little Armenia, calling it the traditional birthplace of the city's Armenian community.^[16,17] The community has since spread to Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena, North Hollywood, Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, Encino and across the San Fernando Valley.^[15]

Glendale is especially closely tied to Armenian American public life. Roughly one in three Glendale residents reports Armenian ancestry, making Armenians the city's largest ethnic group.^[18] Armenian bakeries, groceries, restaurants, schools, churches, medical and law offices and media outlets are part of daily life, and Glendale elected its first Armenian woman mayor, Elen Asatryan, in 2024.^[15]

VII.5Faith, Politics and Institutions Today

About 80% of Armenian Americans who practice a religion belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church, about 10% are Protestant (mostly Armenian Evangelical) and about 3% are Armenian Catholic.^[2] The Apostolic Church has more than 90 churches nationwide, organized into dioceses under both Etchmiadzin and the Catholicosate of Cilicia.^[2,3]

Beyond the churches, the community supports more than 170 educational centers and more than 30 media outlets.^[3] Major national organizations include the AGBU, the Armenian Relief Society, the Armenian Assembly of America (1972), the Armenian National Committee of America, the Fund for Armenian Relief, and youth and athletic groups such as the AYF, Homenetmen and Homenmen.^[3] The political parties founded in the 19th century, the ARF, the Hunchakian Party and the Ramgavar Party, remain active.^[3,2]

VII.6Famous Armenians on U.S. Soil

Armenian Americans work in every field of American life: medicine, dentistry, law, engineering, technology, biotechnology, education, real estate, construction, finance, retail, restaurants, entertainment, academia, government and nonprofit work. The table below lists some of the best-known Armenian Americans and Americans of Armenian heritage, with links to their full profiles.