Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church of Cleveland

History

The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church of Cleveland, Ohio is the oldest Greek Orthodox parish in the city and the mother church of the entire American-Hellenic Community of Greater Cleveland, its history inseparable from the story of Greek immigration to northeastern Ohio.

The first Greeks began arriving in Cleveland in the 1890s, settling in an area known as Greek Town around Bolivar Road between Ontario and East 9th Streets. For years their Orthodox worship was sporadic and decentralized, conducted by itinerant priests in coffeehouses, communal apartments, and occasionally at Saint Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral on Starkweather Avenue. In 1910, the community formalized as the Pan-Hellenic Union and engaged the services of Father George Scarpas, who commuted from Pittsburgh once a month to serve the congregation. The first regular service was held on Christmas Eve in a hall above a movie house at Ontario and Bolivar Streets. By 1912, the society had raised $12,000 and purchased a home on the corner of West 14th Street and Fairfield Avenue in the Tremont neighborhood, and the community was officially incorporated on February 15, 1913.

As the congregation outgrew successive temporary homes, construction began on a permanent church on the Fairfield Avenue site in 1918. The Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, though not yet complete, became the community's sanctuary in 1919, and its three golden domes capped in blue and topped by gold trefoil crosses became the most visible landmark of the Tremont neighborhood, viewed daily by tens of thousands of Interstate 90 commuters. In 1924, Father John Zografos became pastor and during his four-year tenure painted all 85 icons that still adorn the church's interior, a remarkable artistic legacy that the Hellenic Preservation Society of Northeastern Ohio began restoring in 1993. Father Zografos also established the first Greek language school in Cleveland.

Through the Depression years, when the church mortgage was saved from foreclosure by the intervention of community member Antony Hoty, and through the postwar years when the church overflowed with parishioners, Father Chrysogonos Lavriotis provided steady leadership from 1930 through the mid-1950s. As Greek families moved to the suburbs and the demand for new parishes grew, Saints Constantine and Helen was established in Cleveland Heights in 1956, and Saint Demetrios in Rocky River in 1962. All three churches initially operated as a single entity under a common state charter until 1967, when each became autonomous. Through all these changes, the Annunciation retained its position as the mother church of Cleveland's Greek Orthodox community, its annual Greek Heritage Festival at the Tremont neighborhood drawing thousands each Memorial Day weekend to one of the oldest and most beloved Hellenic cultural celebrations in Ohio.

The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church at 2187 West 14th Street in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the greater Cleveland area as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.