History

Some of the Greeks who immigrated to cities on the eastern seaboard of the United States in the early twentieth century made their way south and west to Chattanooga, Tennessee, arriving in the 1920s and 1930s. They seized the opportunity to make new lives for themselves in a growing Southern city, and in time their numbers were sufficient to organize a parish of their own. On January 12, 1939, the Greek Orthodox community in Chattanooga legally incorporated under the State of Tennessee as the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, taking its name from the passage in Luke 1:26-38 in which the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would bear Jesus the Christ.

The parish initially rented space for worship, and as it progressed financially it sought a permanent home. On February 27, 1941, the community purchased a small former Episcopal church on the corner of Kirby and Hickory Streets in the Highland Park section of Chattanooga. The Reverend Constantinides traveled to Chattanooga to serve the community in its earliest years, and the first appointed parish priest, the Reverend C. Contonicolaou, arrived in 1942. On December 1, 1943, the house adjacent to the church was purchased as a parsonage. A succession of priests guided the community through the following decades as it grew and deepened its presence in the city.

In time the original Kirby Street location became inadequate, and the community relocated to its present address on Glenwood Drive. There a multi-purpose building with space for worship, office, classrooms, kitchen, and storage was constructed first, followed by the church itself, which was completed in 1967. In 1997 the old parsonage was converted and expanded into a new fellowship hall. The founding Greek immigrants who built the parish were bound together by a common faith, way of life, and language. The community that has grown from their work is the same in faith, now worshipping predominantly in English and welcoming Orthodox Christians of many backgrounds.

The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church at 722 Glenwood Drive in Chattanooga serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the greater Chattanooga area as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Detroit within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.