History

The Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side of Manhattan stands as the most historically significant Greek Orthodox church in the Western Hemisphere. Its story begins in 1891, when the first Greek Orthodox parish in New York City was established, making it the second Greek Orthodox church in all of the Americas. Those early years were far from easy. The fledgling community rented three different spaces and was served by ten different priests in its first decade alone. By 1904 the parish had only 45 enrolled members despite an estimated 6,000 Greeks living in New York, a state of affairs one historian later described as "total disarray."

The tide began to turn in 1904, when Holy Trinity parishioners purchased their first permanent building, a Gothic-style Episcopal church at 153 East 72nd Street. The community was chartered by a special act of the New York State Legislature in 1896, and the acquisition of a permanent home gave it the stability it had lacked. The parish grew steadily alongside the wave of Greek immigration that transformed the city in the early twentieth century.

Then, on the night of January 18, 1927, the Holy Trinity Church on East 72nd Street burned to the ground. Services were relocated to St. Eleftherios Church on East 24th Street while the community regrouped. The timing of what came next was remarkable. In October 1929, the collapse of the stock market made foreclosed land and buildings available at dramatically reduced prices, and the community seized the opportunity. Land was purchased at its present location on East 74th Street, and an entirely new cathedral was planned.

On September 14, 1931, Eleanor Roosevelt, then wife of Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, laid the cornerstone of the new Byzantine edifice. Within an extraordinary five months the building was completed, and Holy Trinity moved to 319 East 74th Street on March 4, 1932, at a total cost of $577,000. Archbishop Athenagoras, who would later become the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, consecrated the Cathedral on October 22, 1933, calling it the Cathedral of all Hellenism in America. The building's Neo-Byzantine Moderne architecture, designed by Kerr Rainsford, John A. Thompson, and Gerald A. Holmes, made it the largest Eastern Orthodox cathedral in the Americas upon its completion.

The Cathedral's magnificent interior was enriched over subsequent decades. Byzantine mosaics by Sirio Tonelli, imported Italian stained glass in true Byzantine colors and forms, and Botticino marble for the walls, columns, and altar area transformed the sanctuary into one of the finest examples of Orthodox sacred art in the Western world. The iconography adorning the dome, pendentives, and other areas was created by Georgios Gliatas, a student of the renowned 20th-century Greek iconographer Fotis Kontoglou.

With the enthronement of Archbishop Iakovos on April 1, 1959, a pivotal new era began. He formally designated Holy Trinity as the Archdiocesan Cathedral in 1962 and assumed direct supervision of its administration, anchoring it as the spiritual and institutional heart of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Today, the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity at 319 East 74th Street serves as the national cathedral of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the episcopal seat of the Archbishop of America, welcoming the faithful, United Nations officials, and visitors from around the world into a century-old tradition of Orthodox Christian worship in the heart of New York City.