Country United States Membership 800 families Opened 4 March 1932 Architectural type Byzantine architecture | Denomination Greek Orthodox Church Founded 1891 (1891) Function Place of worship | |
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Location 319 East 74th Street, New York, New York 10021 Website www.thecathedralnyc.org Archdiocese Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Construction cost 577,000 USD ($101,300,000 in current dollar terms) Archbishop Archbishop Demetrios of America Similar Saint Basil Academy, St Nicholas Greek Ort, Annunciation Greek Orthodox, Ascension Greek Orthodox, Saint Sophia Cathedral | ||
The Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, at 319–337 East 74th Street on the Upper East Side in New York City, New York, is a Neo-Byzantine-style Greek Orthodox church. It serves as the national cathedral of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, and as the episcopal seat of Archbishop Demetrios of America.
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Established in 1891, and at its present location since 1932, it was the second Greek Orthodox church in the Americas, and the first in New York City. It is the largest Orthodox Christian church in the Western Hemisphere.
Activities
The Cathedral is the home parish for 800 families, and hosts dignitaries and visitors. It offers regular worship (which is broadcast on television), Sunday school, afternoon school, the Cathedral School (grades N-8), bible study, and various ministries and fellowship organizations.
History
In the fall of 1891 the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox parish rented part of an Evangelical church on West 53rd Street near Ninth Avenue at $50 ($1,300 in current dollar terms)-per-month as the church's first home. It was the second Greek Orthodox church in the Americas, and the first in New York City.
In 1904 it purchased and moved to a permanent church building, an Episcopal church of Gothic architecture at 153 East 72nd Street. In 1927, the East 72nd Street church burned down.
In 1929 land was purchased at the present location and a new church was built, in Byzantine syle. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of then-Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, laid the cornerstone of the cathedral on September 14, 1931. Holy Trinity moved to its present location on March 4, 1932. Its total cost was $577,000 ($10,100,000 in current dollar terms). Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople, later Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, consecrated the cathedral on October 22, 1933. He called it: “The Cathedral of all of Hellenism in America.”
In 1949, it established The Cathedral School. It was designated the Archdiocesan Cathedral in 1962.
On September 18, 1999, Archbishop Demetrios was enthroned at the cathedral as Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America. The cathedral's Dean, Rev. Robert Stephanopoulos, the father of former White House aide George Stephanopoulos, had been demoted and relieved of administrative and liturgical responsibilities at the Cathedral in January 1999 by Archbishop Spyridon of America, but by late 1999 had regained his position. Stephanopoulos retired in 2007, after being Dean for 25 years, and Dr. Frank Marangos was named the new Dean. Since June 2012, the Dean has been Fr. Anastasios Gounaris.
Opera singer Maria Callas was christened at the church in 1926, in 2001 television journalist and former political advisor George Stephanopoulos and comedian Alexandra Wentworth were married there, and in 2011 Christopher Nixon Cox, grandson of President Richard Nixon, and heiress Andrea Catsimatidis, daughter of Gristedes billionaire John Catsimatidis, were married there.
Architecture
The exterior is Romanesque Revival red brick and limestone. The cathedral's architects were Kerr Rainsford, John A. Thompson, and Gerald A. Holmes; they later designed Hunter College Uptown, which is now known as Lehman College. The interior has Byzantine mosaics, imported Italian stained glass in Byzantine colors and forms, and botticino marble for walls, columns, and the altar area. The iconography on the dome and other areas was created by Georgios Gliatas, a student of iconographer Fotis Kontoglou. The church sits down the block from the Bohemian Gothic Revival Jan Hus Presbyterian Church.