Saint John Greek Orthodox Church of Blue Point

History

Saint John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church of Blue Point, New York holds the distinction of being the first Christian Orthodox community established in Suffolk County. Its origins trace to 1940 and the Greek War Relief movement, when a local chapter was founded to support Greece during the Second World War. After the war, that same chapter became the base for the fundraising efforts needed to build a permanent church on Long Island's South Shore.

After considering properties in Patchogue, Ronkonkoma, and Bay Shore, the community settled on a twelve-acre parcel in Blue Point, signing the purchase contract on September 13, 1950, for $12,000. With forty families in the area, the decision was made to build a small temporary church first, with plans for a future Byzantine structure. Since 1951, weekly services had been held at Saint Mary's Episcopal Church in Lake Ronkonkoma and at other churches in Patchogue while construction proceeded. A contract was signed on October 20, 1952 with builder Aristodemus Bouyukas of Farmingville for $23,800, and opening ceremonies were held on April 13, 1953, with the first wedding taking place in a bare church furnished with an iconostasis but no pews. The naming of the church took place on October 4, 1953 at a celebration attended by more than 300 people, with the community dedicating the parish to Saint John the Baptist.

From those early years the parish proved fertile ground for the spread of Orthodoxy across Suffolk County. In October 1953, the parish's priest began holding services in the Huntington area as an outreach, and parishioners there launched a drive to purchase a property of their own, with Saint John's contributing the down payment of $2,500. That initiative gave birth to Saint Paraskevi Greek Orthodox Church, the second Greek Orthodox community in Suffolk County, as a direct offspring of the Blue Point parish.

By the late 1970s the original temporary church had served its purpose, and a new edifice modeled after an eleventh-century Byzantine church in Italy took shape in the shadow of the old structure, which was razed in 1984. The cornerstone, key artifacts, and historically significant icons were preserved for posterity. The Thyranoixia of the new Saint John's took place on May 1 and 2, 1982, presided over by Archbishop Iakovos. Through the 1980s the church's interior was enriched with carpeting, pews, and a magnificent iconostasis fabricated entirely of authentic Italian marble and shipped piece by piece from Italy, where its designer, a well-respected Italian stone artisan, came to Blue Point with his crew of expert craftsmen to assemble it on site.

Saint John Greek Orthodox Church at 77 Montauk Highway in Blue Point serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the South Shore of Suffolk County as a parish of the Direct Archdiocesan District of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a community that has grown from forty families and a borrowed church into several hundred families and a landmark of Orthodox Christian life on Long Island.