Holy Trinity - Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church of Staten Island

History

Around 1900 the first Greek families came to Staten Island, the Borough of Richmond, the most geographically isolated of New York City's five boroughs. For those Greeks who lived on the island's northern side, attending church meant crossing the Narrows to Brooklyn or making the longer trip to Manhattan. For those on the southern side the nearest Orthodox parish was in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. As the Greek population of Staten Island grew through the 1920s, the need for a church of their own became pressing.

In 1927, the Greek Educational Society Aristotle Inc. was organized, its immediate purpose to care for the Greek education of island youth and, ultimately, to establish a Greek Orthodox church. In the summer of 1929, a two-acre site was purchased on Richmond Avenue just off Victory Boulevard. Construction began in January 1930, and on May 14, 1930, the opening ceremony took place with the inaugural Divine Liturgy, the new church bearing the name of the Holy Trinity. For the following years the parish was served by weekend and part-time clergy sent by the Archdiocese in Manhattan, a common arrangement for small communities without the resources to support a full-time priest.

The name Saint Nicholas was added to Holy Trinity in the late 1940s, both because Saint Nicholas is the traditional patron saint of islanders and seafarers and in honor of parishioner Nicholas Skunakis, who served the church as a volunteer chanter for thirty-one years until his death in 1959. In the 1950s the original building was expanded to include a narthex, choir loft, classrooms, and office space, a project completed in 1955. The opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964 transformed Staten Island's character, as waves of new residents moved in from Brooklyn and the other boroughs, swelling the ranks of Holy Trinity-Saint Nicholas substantially. The parish hired its first full-time priest in 1965, and under his pastoral leadership groundbreaking took place in 1968 for an entirely new house of worship. Archbishop Iakovos blessed the opening of the new church on April 10, 1970. The annual Greek Festival, launched in 1973, became a cherished Staten Island tradition that has continued ever since.

Holy Trinity-Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at 1641 Richmond Avenue in Staten Island serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the Borough of Richmond as a parish of the Direct Archdiocesan District of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a multi-ethnic community of more than 350 stewardship families and the spiritual home of Greek Orthodoxy on Staten Island for nearly a century.