History

The earliest members of the Greek Orthodox faith in Steubenville, Ohio had no church of their own. Some worshipped in the upper floors of commercial buildings while others crossed the Ohio River to Weirton, West Virginia for services, paying the tolls on both the Fort Steuben Bridge and the Market Street Bridge to do so. That long journey of faith ended in 1945 when the community found its permanent home.

On August 21, 1945, the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Steubenville, East Liverpool, Toronto, and the surrounding districts of Ohio purchased from the Calvary Methodist Church the real estate property at the intersection of South and Fourth Streets in downtown Steubenville. The deed was formally transferred on July 19, 1946, making Holy Trinity the first Greek Orthodox church in the city of Steubenville. There is a certain poetic justice in the building the Greek community acquired: constructed for a large Methodist Episcopal congregation in the early twentieth century, the building was designed in the Neoclassical style, featuring a large dome, a prominent colonnade of four Ionic columns at its main entrance, and architectural forms drawn directly from ancient Greece. The Greek Orthodox community that moved in had not built the most Greek-looking church in Steubenville; they had simply recognized it.

The interior retained features that spoke to the building's nineteenth-century Protestant origins, including a rear balcony that echoed the early church custom by which women were once seated separately from men during services. Over the decades the congregation transformed the interior for Orthodox Christian worship while carefully preserving the building's distinctive architectural character. In 2006, Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, recognized for its historically significant Neoclassical architecture and its place among the most distinguished religious buildings in downtown Steubenville, one of eight National Register-listed locations in the city.

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church at 300 South 4th Street in Steubenville serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the upper Ohio Valley as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, its ancient faith at home in one of the most architecturally distinguished Greek-style buildings in the region.