History

On July 3, 1918, in the nation's capital, a small group of Greek immigrants with strong ties to their homeland took the bold step of forming a second Greek Orthodox community in Washington, D.C. A prominent figure in that founding was Demetrios Theophilatos, a wealthy Greek ship owner whose support helped give the new parish its early footing. The original community was established at 6th and C Streets, S.W., with Fathers Menides and Metaxopoulos leading a congregation of approximately 100 faithful, and thus was born the parish of Saints Constantine and Helen.

Through the 1920s and 1930s the community navigated the political divisions that split many Greek communities across America, with the royalist and Venizelist factions creating parallel and sometimes rival parish structures across the country. When Archbishop Athenagoras assumed leadership of the Church of the Americas in the 1930s, his wise counsel helped reconcile these divisions, and the parish was able to grow in unity. In the 1940s the Koinotikos Pharos, one of the first parish magazines in the country, was published, and one of the first mixed-voice a cappella choirs in the nation was organized under the direction of Lazarus Demetriades, an accomplished musician and member of the National Symphony Orchestra whose arrangements are still sung in the parish's services.

By 1954, the congregation had grown well beyond the capacity of its original facility, and a new site was acquired at 16th and Upshur Streets, N.W., where the first Divine Liturgy was celebrated on April 11, 1954. In the late 1940s a small one-day bazaar had taken root that grew over the following decades into a three-day Greek Festival, the largest and oldest such festival in Washington, D.C., held annually for more than fifty years and beloved by the broader capital community.

After more than ninety years in the District of Columbia, the parish made the decision to follow its membership into the Maryland suburbs. In 2012 the community relocated to Silver Spring, Maryland, with liturgies held temporarily at Saint Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral on New Hampshire Avenue while construction of a new permanent home proceeded. The groundbreaking at 701 Norwood Road was celebrated on June 15, 2013, with United States Congressman John Sarbanes in attendance.

Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church of Washington, D.C. at 721 Norwood Road in Silver Spring serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the Washington metropolitan area as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of New Jersey within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, carrying more than a century of history from the heart of the nation's capital to the Maryland suburbs.