History

Greek Orthodox Christians first arrived in the Tacoma area beginning around 1901, fleeing poverty and conscription into the Ottoman Turkish army. These early arrivals were almost entirely single men, who found work in railroad construction, lumber mills, and on the docks of Tacoma, a port city near the southern end of Puget Sound. The first women of the community did not arrive until 1914, and in the years before that the Greeks of Tacoma built a social life centered on coffee shops, with as many as fifteen Greek coffee houses operating in the city by 1918. By that time the community had grown to roughly one thousand people, the vast majority still single men working to build a foothold in the Pacific Northwest. The last of the Greek coffee shops would not close until the 1960s.

In the absence of a parish of their own, the community relied on visiting clergy for life's most important occasions. A Russian Orthodox priest would travel from Seattle to perform occasional weddings, baptisms, and funerals, and in time these visits grew into monthly liturgies. By 1923, sustained organizing efforts had raised sufficient funds to build a church, and the first service was held on Palm Sunday, 1924, in a borrowed Episcopal building. A significant portion of the founding community traced its roots to the village of Gallimi on the island of Marmara in Asia Minor, and the parish was named in honor of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, the beloved bishop of Myra known throughout the Orthodox world for his mercy toward the poor and the unjustly accused.

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Tacoma and the South Puget Sound as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a community that honors its Hellenic roots while welcoming all who seek the fullness of the Orthodox Christian faith.