Saint George Greek Orthodox Church of Des Moines

History

The first Greeks arrived in Des Moines in 1895, when The Iowa State Register announced the opening of a confectionery and fruit house by two Greek immigrants. By 1920 the U.S. Census counted 230 foreign-born Greeks in the city, most of them from the villages of the Peloponnese, though the community also included arrivals from Sparta, Athens, Corinth, Salonika, and the Aegean islands. Unlike Greek communities in many other cities, Des Moines Greeks did not cluster into a single ethnic neighborhood; they dispersed across the city, opening shoe repair shops, restaurants, and candy stores that made them visible presences in the commercial life of the Iowa capital.

In 1924, approximately two hundred Greek immigrants in central Iowa formed a Kinotis, or Greek society, drawing membership not only from Des Moines but from Boone, Perry, Fort Dodge, Newton, Oskaloosa, Ottumwa, and Valley Junction. Four years later, in 1928, the Greek Orthodox parish was formally established. The parishioners voted unanimously to name their church after their most common given name, Saint George the Great Martyr, a choice that embodied both devotion and the democratic spirit of the immigrant community. Visiting priests conducted services on an irregular schedule at the old YMCA building at Fourth Street and Keosauqua Way and later at a hall owned by Saint Mark's Episcopal Church. In 1929, the parish fought U.S. immigration authorities to bring Father Meletios Kestekides from Greece to serve as its first regular priest.

In late 1930 the parish purchased its present building at 1110 35th Street in the Drake neighborhood from Westminster United Presbyterian Church, agreeing on a purchase price and immediately erecting an iconostasis in front of the altar to convert the space for Orthodox worship. The first Divine Liturgy in the building was celebrated on Christmas Day, 1930. The building had been constructed in 1906 as the Elmwood United Presbyterian Church, designed by the prominent Des Moines architectural firm Proudfoot and Bird in a Neo-Classical Revival style with a Doric-order portico. Its original 1906 stained glass windows, including windows depicting scenes from Christ's life and the Parable of the Sower, were deliberately preserved when the Greeks moved in, valued both for their artistic beauty and for their compatibility with Orthodox theological themes. Among the original donors whose names the windows preserved was Henry C. Wallace, United States Secretary of Agriculture, whose son Henry A. Wallace, later Vice-President of the United States, had been married in the building in 1914. On November 14, 1937, attended by 800 persons including Iowa Governor Nelson G. Kraschel, the church celebrated the burning of its re-negotiated $16,000 mortgage and Bishop Kallistos of Chicago consecrated the building.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 28, 1997, recognized for its architectural significance as part of the legacy of Proudfoot and Bird in Iowa and for its role in the history of Greek immigrant community development. On November 4, 1997, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I visited Saint George Parish, one of the most significant moments in the parish's history.

Saint George Greek Orthodox Church at 1110 35th Street in Des Moines serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of central Iowa as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the oldest Orthodox Christian church in the Des Moines metropolitan area, its congregation a diverse family of Greeks, Serbians, Russians, North Africans, Ethiopians, and American converts united in the faith its immigrant founders carried to the Iowa prairie nearly a century ago.