To celebrate Easter, the bakery sold special "choreg," an Armenian semi-sweet cake.

"We make choreg all year round, but normally they're like little rolls," says Missak Ourfalian, the store's manager. "For Easter we make it bigger and sell it with three red dye-colored eggs on top."

He adds: "The Armenian food is a basic part of the culture. People want to have the foods that they're used to and we provide that convenience."

But the store manager does not think that bakeries alone will sustain the Armenian influence in greater Boston.

"You need organizations, you need churches," he says. "Organizations in the area try to keep the Armenian culture and heritage alive, especially to the youth. We need to reach out and instill the Armenian value."

"Food is a very small part of that," he says.

Although many of Watertown's Armenian residents say they are concerned with preserving their culture, this attitude has not always prevailed.

Armenians began to emigrate to America in large numbers in the early part of this century. Poverty forced them to abandon some aspects of their own culture in favor of American traditions, according to James R. Russell, Mashtots professor of Armenian studies at Harvard.

"These people weren't worried about preserving their language--they learned English and learned it fast," he says. "The lynchpin of all their existence was economics. The rest of it was secondary."

But in St. James at least, the children and parents chatted with each other in Armenian.

Arrival and Growth

The first major wave of Armenian immigration began in 1906 and was fostered by the Ottoman Turks' discriminatory and eventually genocidal policies.

Many Armenian immigrants settled in Boston, where they were employed in blue-collar jobs.

"They worked in the factories and mills of Worcester, and the shoe factories of Lynn," Russell says. "Massachusetts mass-produced much of the country's shoes, and the work was done by Armenians."

Gradually the Armenian immigrants forged a better life for themselves and began to migrate to suburban Watertown.