History

Saint Eleftherios Greek Orthodox Church of New York City was established by a group of determined Greek Orthodox Christians in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. The first official service took place on Holy Thursday night, May 2, 1918, in the former Twenty-fourth Street Methodist Episcopal Church of 1860, a building the congregation would soon transform into a distinguished center of Greek Orthodox life in the city.

The parish rose to a prominence in New York Greek Orthodox history that far exceeded what its modest Chelsea location might suggest. When the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on East 72nd Street burned to the ground on the night of January 18, 1927, Saint Eleftherios was designated the acting Cathedral of New York, a role it would fill again through the late 1920s and early 1930s while Holy Trinity was rebuilt. It was in the sanctuary of Saint Eleftherios that Archbishop Athenagoras was enthroned upon his arrival in the United States in 1931, one of the most consequential moments in the history of Greek Orthodoxy in America, as Athenagoras would go on to become the 268th Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and one of the towering figures of twentieth-century Christianity. The first Clergy-Laity Congress of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America was also hosted in the Saint Eleftherios church hall, giving this small Chelsea parish a place at the very foundation of the organizational life of American Greek Orthodoxy.

On a morning in 1973, flames consumed the original church building from top to bottom, a devastating loss for a community that had served as the acting Cathedral of New York and hosted the enthronement of a future Ecumenical Patriarch. Under the determined leadership of Parish Council President John Mallios, the community rallied and rebuilt, and the present church at 359 West 24th Street, designed by architect Steven Papadatos, opened on the same site in 1976, carrying forward the parish's storied history in a new building.

Saint Eleftherios Greek Orthodox Church at 359 West 24th Street in Manhattan serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Chelsea as a parish of the Direct Archdiocesan District of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a quiet sanctuary in the heart of one of New York's most dynamic neighborhoods whose history places it at the very center of American Greek Orthodoxy's institutional founding.