Saint George Greek Orthodox Church of New York

History

The Saint George Greek Orthodox Community of New York City was first established in 1923 at 451 West 39th Street in Manhattan, a modest beginning that reflected the determination of the Greek Orthodox faithful of Midtown to have a parish of their own in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. On June 11, 1940, Saint George Tropeoforos Greek Orthodox Church was formally incorporated under its full name, honoring Saint George the Trophy-Bearer, the beloved third-century martyr whose feast day on April 23 has been celebrated throughout the Orthodox world for nearly seventeen centuries.

On April 30, 1943, the community purchased its present home at 307 West 54th Street, a building whose history in Manhattan stretches back to 1886, when it was constructed as an offshoot of the Narragansett Club, a Tammany Hall-connected Democratic political organization. In the following decades the building passed through successive incarnations as the home of the New Amsterdam Council of the Knights of Columbus and then a cycling club before becoming, during the Great Depression, an old-calendar Greek Orthodox church. In the early 1950s the church came under the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and took the name Saint George, which it has carried ever since. Beneath the entrance floor mat, the original Knights of Columbus monogram KC survives in the tilework, a quiet reminder of the building's layered history.

The interior of the church, encrusted with murals and icons accumulated over decades of parish life, draws visitors and parishioners alike into the visual theology of the Orthodox tradition. An exquisite iconostasis dominates the worship space. The building's outwardly modest exterior, slender between the taller buildings of West 54th Street, gives way to an interior whose sacred art and warmth have made it a beloved gathering place for the diverse Orthodox Christian community of Midtown Manhattan.

Saint George Tropeoforos Greek Orthodox Church at 307 West 54th Street in Manhattan serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Midtown New York as a parish of the Direct Archdiocesan District of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a centenarian community whose doors have remained open to all who seek the ancient Orthodox Christian faith in the heart of New York City for more than a hundred years.