Dormition of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Church of Greensboro

History

In the early decades of the twentieth century, a large number of Greek immigrants made their way to Greensboro, North Carolina, seeking a better life in the Piedmont city whose textile and tobacco industries offered opportunity. By 1930 the Greek families of Greensboro and nearby High Point had organized the Arsakis Society, formed primarily to teach the Greek language to their children. That educational effort lasted six years, until each community had established its own instructional program. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s the Greensboro Greeks had no church of their own, gathering once a month in a rented hall while a visiting priest traveled from Winston-Salem to celebrate services for families from both Greensboro and Burlington.

The community's desire for a permanent parish deepened through those years of makeshift worship, and in 1947 Father Anastasios Macropoulos, a graduate of the University of Athens Theological Seminary who had been ordained in 1932, arrived in Greensboro with his family to serve the growing congregation. In 1948 a two-story house and lot in downtown Greensboro at Oak Court and Church Street were purchased, the home renovated into a chapel, and on November 21, 1948, the church opened its doors. Andrew Kypriss was selected as the godfather of the new church building and gave it its name: Koimisis tis Theotokou, the Dormition of the Mother of God, the great feast celebrated each August 15 when the Orthodox Church commemorates the falling asleep and translation of the Virgin Mary.

As the parish grew and the congregation scattered to different neighborhoods, the community sought a larger and more suitable location. Property at Kensington Drive and West Market Street was purchased with the goal of building a proper Byzantine-style church, but new zoning laws rendered the site unsuitable due to insufficient size and parking. The search continued until the present property on Westridge Road was secured, where the permanent church that serves the community today was built, giving the faithful of the Piedmont Triad the dedicated Orthodox house of worship their founders had long envisioned.

The Dormition of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Church at 800 Westridge Road in Greensboro serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the Piedmont Triad as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Atlanta within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.