Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church of York

History

The story of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church of York, Pennsylvania is inseparable from the story of the Greek community that built it. The first Greek immigrants arrived in York and Adams Counties in the late 1800s, most of them young men, some of them teenagers, many following fellow villagers who had already made the journey. The first Greek families became established in York around 1910, and a strong sense of community quickly took root among them. It was the need for a burial plot in 1918 that prompted the formation of a formal Greek Community, whose first act was to purchase burial lots in Mount Rose Cemetery. The community was formally chartered by the York County Court in 1922 as the Virgin Mary Greek Community of York.

Through the 1920s and early 1930s religious services were held at Easter and Christmas when a priest was brought in to rented rooms in downtown York, and priests were called in for marriages and funerals mostly held in family homes. The first Greek School was established in 1932, organized by families who hired a teacher to conduct classes at a private residence. In 1937 a building was purchased at 410 South Duke Street, renovated to serve simultaneously as chapel, Greek School, and social hall, and for the first time the community had a full-time local priest. During World War II, the York Greek Community's pride in Greece's resistance to invasion translated into warm recognition from the larger York community, whose donations to Greek War Relief deepened the bonds between the Greek settlers and their adopted city.

By the mid-1940s, sentiment was growing for a proper church building. A lot at 249 East South Street was purchased in 1944, construction began in 1950, and the first service in the new church was held on March 4, 1951. The three decades the community worshipped on East South Street marked its full flowering, as the founding generation's children came of age, entered the professions, and built careers across York County. Membership grew from under thirty families to over two hundred members. Greek Food Festivals, launched in 1965 and eventually held at York College, brought the Greek community into warm relationship with the broader York community. The first gyro tent at the York Fair appeared in 1975.

As the congregation continued to grow, the decision was made to build a new church in the suburbs. Ground was broken on March 25, 1979, on a property on Pine Grove Road in York Township. The formal Thyranoixia, or Opening of the Doors, of the new Byzantine-style church was held on October 18 and 19, 1981. The construction debt of approximately $900,000 was paid in full within a decade, and in 1993 a new addition providing larger Sunday School rooms and a Cultural Center gymnasium was completed.

Today, the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church serves approximately 125 families at 2500 Pine Grove Road in York as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a community whose story of faith, hard work, and belonging to both a Greek heritage and a broader American home continues to unfold more than a century after the first young Greeks arrived in York County.