, Gould Hall In antiquity, the area was known as
Asomato and
Anáplus. In 1468, Sultan
Mehmed the Conqueror brought
Albanians to the city for pavement construction. He installed them in Arnavutköy, hence the name of the suburb. In 1863,
Robert College, the oldest American school outside the
United States, was established on its current campus which originally stretched from Arnavutköy to the vicinity of
Bebek and
Rumelihisarı. In 1971, a section of this campus became part of
Boğaziçi University, which was formerly the
college section of the school. The
high school section, formerly named Robert Academy (RA) is still an American school and is located on the Arnavutköy side of the Robert College campus. According to the
Salname for 1912, the district's total population was 7,482, consisting ethnographically of 5,973
Rûms (Christians), 493
Muslims, 342
Armenians, 32
Jews and 642 people of other nationality. During the WWI, the area suffered because of the British
bombing of İstanbul. Arnavutköy used to be famous for its
Ottoman strawberries, a less juicy and smaller version of the strawberries found throughout the rest of Turkey. A few strawberry fields still survive inland from the coast and every spring local greengrocers are mobbed by strawberry lovers. == Architecture ==