Main Street is both a real place and an idea. As a place, it’s a fixture in hundreds of Massachusetts communities. As an idea, Main Street means everyday people—and their acts of civic duty, their small businesses, social ties, jobs, and mundane errands. It stands for entrepreneurship, local democracy, face-to-face community, and ordinary life.

“It’s very Norman Rockwell here,” said the owner of a gift shop I visited on Melrose’s Main Street, which is named Main Street.

The idea, or image, of Main Street does emerge from what you might actually find in our downtowns and centers: diverse little storefronts; a town hall of granite and brick; a library story-time; a white-steeple church; my mom at a weekly protest-rally at the corner of Centre and Beacon. There are the people at the copy shop and coffee shop, the sandwich shop, the boba shop, the law office, pharmacy, nail salon, Indian buffet, taqueria, bank, and pub. They are pouring the drinks or drinking the drinks. They are getting stuff done, or just coping with life, with a little help from a neighbor.

A stroll to the Brazilian bakery, Thai eatery, or new business in an old center can reveal another truth essential to Main Street, both the place and the idea. America is characterized by immigration. A vision of Main Street’s virtues—civic entrepreneurial, social, economic—should call to mind the power of immigrants.

I think of my great grandfather Max Dain, immigrant from the Kovno region of the Russian empire (now Lithuania), opening a Main Street pharmacy, Dain Drugs, on Mass Ave. in Cambridge’s Central Square. “Just what the doctor orders,” read a 1927 Dain Drug ad in the local paper, Cambridge Day. My dad recalled working the soda machine.

The current data bear this out too. According to the 2023 Boston Indicators report, Global Greater Boston, immigrants own 40 percent of Main Street businesses in Greater Boston, including 86 percent of convenience stores, 55 percent of restaurants, 45 percent of beauty salons, and 41 percent of grocery stores. Across the region, immigrants make up 21 percent of the population, 25 percent of the labor force, and 28 percent of business owners generally.

In 2017, I began taking my kids to globe-trot through Greater Boston’s culinary scene, on Main Streets. Our top pick was Indian cuisine, which we found in Lexington, Maynard, Stoneham, Franklin, Wellesley, Weymouth, and so many more places.

Given the abundance of Indian buffets, it isn’t surprising that, per Boston Indicators’ report, India represents the third most common country of origin of Greater Boston’s immigrant population (adding up all arrivals since 1980). Larger populations hail from China and Dominican Republic; Brazil and Haiti take fourth and fifth places.

Before my family’s tour began, I had no appreciation for just how many white-steeple churches Massachusetts has, let alone Indian buffets. Many of the churches were styled, in the early 1800s, to resemble Greek temples, pediment over columns or pilasters. Homes, banks, town halls, and schools of that era also went all Greek Revival. The temple forms linked America to ancient Athens, birthplace of democracy—securing a young republic on ancient pillars, at least symbolically. Democracies both young and old can use some bolsters.

When I notice groupings of Greek Revivals, I find myself here-and-now in a village the 1830s, ‘40s, and ‘50s built, a place immigrants significantly continued to build. In 1850, more than a third of Boston’s residents were immigrants. Lowell, Lawrence, Fall River, and New Bedford also drew robust immigrant communities. Immigrants helped knit the region together. Over decades, long before we were born, immigrant crews graded the roads, dug the sewers, extended tracks, built foundations. Their work guides us today.

Federal restrictions slowed immigration in the 1920s, then reforms revived it in the 1960s. My husband arrived by plane in 1999. He grew up in Soviet Kazakhstan. He’s not the only immigrant in our Newton neighborhood, a short walk from Main Streets. Every single suburb of Boston has diversified since 1999, across multiple dimensions, but especially by country of origin.

“Malden wins the award for most diverse,” I jotted in my journal after visiting Malden’s historic downtown in 2018. I based the badge on an observation—that each grouping of people-on-the-street was speaking a different language—and an impression of cultural, class, ethnic, racial, and place-of-birth diversity. My non-scientific hunch was not far off: The 2025 Boston Indicators report, Residential Segregation in Greater Boston, found Malden comes in right after Randolph, Everett, Brockton and Boston in diversity, and just ahead of Lowell, Lynn, Framingham, Cambridge, and Revere.

On that 2018 Malden visit, my kids and I skipped the Indian restaurant, opting for a brand-new Mediterranean place. We chatted with the immigrant entrepreneur-owner during our lunch feast. On our way out, my son turned to her, exclaiming in his not-yet-deepened voice, “The food was ten out of ten!” She wrapped her arms around him and kissed the top of his head.

That night I wrote in my journal, “May our loving embraces protect him. May her restaurant succeed. The food was ten out of ten.”

Before this last blizzard, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu shared her snow emergency plans, concluding: “Take care of each other.” Sage advice for snow emergencies, sunny days, and scary times alike. Community is protective.

And Main Streets are for community. This I know: My mom would love for you to join her at weekly protests by the Newton Centre green. That is one of many good ways to support Main Street (people, place, idea.) I’ll also pitch this small one: Check out Women in World Jazz playing Cape Verde’s coladeira, Cuba’s cha-cha, and songs from Israel, Brazil and Japan at libraries and town greens throughout Greater Boston. A friend of mine, an immigrant, started the international ensemble. I am grateful to them and all the everyday people who make our Main Streets meaningful.

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Check out the Boston Foundation’s Three Pronged Strategy to Support Our Immigrant Neighbors.