History

The Assumption Greek Orthodox Church of San Angelo, Texas holds a distinction that reaches across the vast expanse of West Texas: for many decades it was the only Greek Orthodox church in all of West Texas, drawing faithful of every ethnicity from a wide area spanning Texas and New Mexico. Its building, designed in 1887 by locally celebrated architect Oscar Ruffini, is the second oldest church building still standing in San Angelo.

The community's origins trace to November 1929, when thirty-five Greek residents who had come to the Concho Valley during the oil boom years of the 1920s organized the Hellenic Educational Society, known informally as the Plato Society. Their earliest liturgies were celebrated above the old City Café on South Chadbourne Street. The Hellenic Educational Society was formally incorporated on July 6, 1931, and the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary received its state charter on November 28, 1932. In 1933 Emmanuel Episcopal Church generously extended the use of its original frame structure on West Harris Street for Orthodox worship services. In 1938 a fire damaged that building, and the Greeks purchased the structure and moved it to its present location at the intersection of what were then known as Avenue G and Sam Street, later renamed Montecito Drive and Kenwood Drive. Local architect L.H. Gaskins designed the renovation, and on July 28, 1937, two lots were purchased from G. Dorrance for $950. The parish has worshipped at 801 Montecito Drive ever since, with a parish hall and storeroom added over the years.

For generations the parish served as the Orthodox Christian center for a geographic area encompassing San Angelo, Midland, Odessa, Pecos, Lubbock, and Amarillo. The church was consecrated in 1990, and a Texas Historical Commission marker was erected on the property in 2012 in recognition of its historical and religious significance. Over the decades the ethnic character of the community has evolved, with many non-Greek converts drawn by the beauty and reverence of Orthodox worship, a transformation the community embraces as a testament to the universality of the ancient faith.

The Assumption Greek Orthodox Church at 801 Montecito Drive in San Angelo serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of West Texas and eastern New Mexico as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the oldest Greek Orthodox church in West Texas and a quiet beacon of Eastern Christianity in the heart of the Concho Valley.