History

It was in 1894 that the first two permanent Greek residents arrived in Greenville, followed by more aspiring immigrants seeking their destiny. By 1931 there were enough Greeks in the area who wanted to sustain their religion and language that they applied for a state charter to form a church.

On April 8, 1932, the congregation purchased an existing house at 15 DeCamp Street from Mr. P.F. Cureton and converted it into the first Saint George Greek Orthodox Church of Greenville, South Carolina. The ground floor contained a folding partition converting the space between the Sanctuary and Social Hall, and the second level comprised the Greek School and Sunday School facilities. This holy house reached its limits in the late 1930s when the community grew to 30 to 40 families.

In 1936, Father Michael Mekouris was brought as a permanent priest to serve the community. A Greek ladies circle was organized by Eugenia Manos, and Jimmy Petropoulos became the first president of the Greenville AHEPA men's organization. Through the 1940s and 1950s the community established itself as a visible and beloved presence in Greenville's commercial life, with Greek-owned restaurants, bakeries, and drive-ins becoming fixtures of the city.

A wooden church building was built in 1942 on the DeCamp Street site. The Hellenic Center was built in the early 1980s, providing new facilities for a growing Sunday School and Greek School. The first Greek Festival was held in 1986. Construction began in August 1993 for the current Cathedral building, with the older church razed in May 1992. The new Cathedral celebrated its first Divine Liturgy on December 11, 1995.

The architects Craig, Gauldin, Davis spent approximately a year and a half studying Byzantine Cathedral architecture around the world and visiting Greek Orthodox churches up and down the eastern seaboard. The Cathedral takes two basilica rectangles intersected to form a cruciform with a high dome in the center, reflecting the 14th to 16th century Cretan Byzantine School in both its structure and iconography. The mosaic icons were handmade by iconographer George Papastamatiou, and all woodwork was handmade in Astoria, New York, by master craftsman Kosta Pylarinos in American walnut. The dome contains the second-largest mosaic icon in diameter in the United States. In June 1999 Metropolitan Alexios of Atlanta conferred the title of Cathedral upon the parish, which seats 684 congregants.

Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral at 406 North Academy Street in Greenville serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the South Carolina Upstate as a Cathedral of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Atlanta within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.