History

John Gretes, acknowledged as Norfolk's first Greek immigrant, settled in the city in 1898. Shortly thereafter George Christopoulos and his wife Paraskevi arrived, and the names of Christopoulos and Gretes appear frequently as the founding parishioners of the Greek Orthodox community in Norfolk. As the community's early leader, George Christopoulos led a small committee that raised $300 to appoint a priest and start a building fund. Before a church of their own existed, the spiritual needs of Norfolk's Greek residents had been served irregularly by the Reverend Father Constantine Doropoulos, who traveled from Baltimore to celebrate the Liturgy at Saint Paul's Church on Saint Paul's Boulevard.

On March 3, 1911, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the Divine Liturgy was celebrated in Norfolk by a newly appointed resident priest, marking the formal founding of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral. The first church occupied a building on Freemason Street, which served the community faithfully through its early decades. As the Greek Orthodox population of Hampton Roads grew, the need for a larger complex became clear. In 1943 a new church building fund drive was initiated, and the General Assembly of 1947 authorized the purchase of a parcel of land at Granby and Fife Streets, the Cathedral's present location. In 1952 construction of the new church began, a cornerstone was laid in 1954, and on March 27, 1955, the first services were held in the new and beautiful Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church on Granby Street. The Hellenic Center followed, opening on March 8, 1959, under the visionary leadership of Parish Council President Theodore R. Constant. On December 14, 2003, Saint Theodore's Chapel was consecrated, enriching the Cathedral campus with all the art and beauty of a true Byzantine church and completing a complex that has continued to expand to serve the growing community.

Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral at 7220 Granby Street in Norfolk serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Hampton Roads as a Cathedral of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of New Jersey within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a spiritual center of more than five hundred families and more than a century of Orthodox Christian witness in the second-largest city in Virginia.