History

In the spring of 1913, a small group of Greeks organized the first Greek Orthodox community in Brooklyn, holding their first services by August of that year in a small church on Johnson and Lawrence Streets. The members of the community wanted more than a temporary arrangement. They joined their resources and collected donations from Greek Americans across the United States, contributions ranging from a few pennies to one hundred dollars, and acquired the property on Schermerhorn Street where the Cathedral stands today. On April 16, 1916, the cornerstone of Saints Constantine and Helen Church was laid, and the building that rose from that cornerstone has been the spiritual home of Brooklyn's Greek Orthodox faithful ever since.

In 1922 the growing community purchased a building on State Street to house an afternoon school for its youth and a Community Center for community functions, expanding the parish's reach beyond worship into the education and cultural life of Brooklyn's Greeks. The church building was expanded in 1946 and renovated and rededicated in 1960, enriched with valuable icons by the renowned iconographer Constantinos Yioussis whose sacred imagery gives the interior its distinctly Byzantine character. In June 1966, the parish was elevated to the rank of Brooklyn's Cathedral, a recognition of its standing as the center of Hellenic Orthodox life in the borough. That same year the community celebrated the graduation of the first eighth-grade class of the A. Fantis Parochial School, which has educated generations of Greek-American children in Brooklyn Heights ever since.

In September 2001, the Cathedral took on a special significance in the broader Greek Orthodox world when Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at the World Trade Center was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11. The displaced Saint Nicholas community found a temporary spiritual home at Saints Constantine and Helen, a gesture of welcome that deepened the Cathedral's role as a center of Orthodoxy in New York. A fire in 1991 had earlier tested the community, but repairs restored the building to its full dignity. In recognition of its historic significance, the Cathedral became the first parish in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America to become a Founding Member of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Foundation, a commitment of tangible support to the Mother Church of Constantinople that the community described as an expression of the particular bond they feel with the Ecumenical Patriarchate through their patron saints.

Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral at 64 Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Brooklyn as a parish of the Direct Archdiocesan District of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, one of the oldest Greek Orthodox churches in New York City, the center of Hellenism in the borough of Brooklyn, and a historic cathedral whose more than a century of parish life has made it one of the most distinguished Greek Orthodox communities in the United States.