History

Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church of Manchester, New Hampshire was founded in 1931 by Greek immigrants who had settled in the neighborhoods surrounding Massabesic Lake on the east side of the city, most of them originally from Kalambaka and Kastraki in the Meteora region of Thessaly. Before the parish existed, these families would board the trolley on Sundays to make the journey across the city to Saint George Greek Orthodox Church, the older of Manchester's Greek parishes. As their community grew, they pooled their modest resources to build a small Greek school for their children, and from that beginning the desire to establish a church of their own took shape.

With the help of a humble mortgage, the community continued to build. In 1933 the first priest was sent from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America to serve the new Saint Nicholas parish, lovingly known by its parishioners as St. Nick's, giving the community the pastoral care it had long sought. The families who raised the parish from the ground went on to raise their children and grandchildren within its walls, weaving it into the fabric of their lives across successive generations.

Saint Nicholas is the smallest of the three Greek Orthodox churches in Manchester, a distinction the community embraces rather than laments. It describes itself as small but mighty, friendly, and family-oriented, celebrating its services ninety percent in English with Greek reserved for hymns and commonly known prayers, reflecting a Pan-Orthodox spirit of welcome that has defined its character since its founding.

Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at 1168 Bridge Street in Manchester serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the greater Manchester area as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.