History

Around the time of World War II, Pittsburgh immigrants began moving out of the city and into the suburbs, many of them settling in the South Hills area. Among those immigrants was a sizeable Greek population who found it inconvenient to travel to the North Side or Oakland for religious worship. During the spring and summer of 1950, a group of people began meeting to discuss and promote the idea of establishing a Greek Orthodox church in the South Hills, and a series of coffee hours expanded into a general meeting held at the American Legion Hall in Brookline in November 1950, where ninety families attended.

As interest grew, a location easily accessible to all was agreed upon. In the fall of 1952, South Hills Greek Orthodox members realized their dream as they held their first open house at a property at Brookline Junction on Parquet Street. In 1953 funds were raised to purchase the Mt. Lebanon Lutheran Church at Washington Road and Academy Avenue, and the church officially opened in 1954 under the name Holy Cross, its dedication to the Elevation of the Holy Cross a fitting choice for what would become known as the Church on the Hill.

By the early 1960s the Academy Avenue church was bursting at the seams as the community grew, and the parish authorized the purchase of an eleven-acre tract of land at the intersection of Gilkeson and Washington Roads. Site preparation began in the spring of 1966, with groundbreaking ceremonies held September 10 and 11, 1966. On the Feast Day of the Annunciation, March 25, 1968, construction began on the new church. His Grace Bishop Gerasimos officiated at the Divine Liturgy on September 14, 1969, fittingly the Feast Day of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, and the new church was blessed. Archbishop Iakovos consecrated the Church of the Holy Cross on Sunday, September 19, 1971, with hundreds attending to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. In 1972 the first official Holy Cross Greek Food Festival was held, eventually becoming the largest annual event in the South Hills. The Holy Cross Community Center opened on September 12, 1993, and in 2004 a large-scale renovation and beautification project transformed the sanctuary and narthex with Byzantine-style chandeliers, new iconography, and a fresh interior palette, coinciding with the Church's fiftieth anniversary.

Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church at 123 Gilkeson Road in Pittsburgh serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the South Hills as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.