Saints Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church of Westland

History

Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church of Westland, Michigan was founded in 1931, its origins tracing to the late 1800s when young Greek immigrants from villages around Sparta and Arcadia began arriving in Detroit. By 1892 more than one hundred Greeks were living in the city, and their numbers continued to grow through the early decades of the twentieth century. Twenty-five families who had been meeting in a rented hall on Myrtle Street, drawn together by the desire to establish a church on Detroit's west side, began organizing formally in 1930 with the election of the first board of trustees. Services were held first in a private home, then in a hall above the Strand Theatre at 14th Street and Grand River, while the congregation steadily raised funds toward a permanent home.

In 1937 the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America officially approved the goal of building a church for the northwest Detroit Greek Orthodox community. The congregation purchased land on Oakman Boulevard in 1944 and broke ground on a permanent church in 1948, with the beautiful white marble altar that would become one of the parish's most beloved features installed in the new building when it opened in 1950. At its peak the parish had grown into the focal point for spiritual and social activities for more than 750 Greek families, drawing its membership from the west side of Detroit, Dearborn, and surrounding areas. Saints Constantine and Helen also served as the mother church from which the Greek Orthodox parishes of Holy Cross in Farmington Hills and Nativity of the Virgin Mary in Plymouth Township were established.

As Detroit's population migrated to the suburbs following the upheavals of the 1960s, the congregation began to decline at the Oakman Boulevard location. By the early 1980s the community had made the difficult but necessary decision to follow its members westward. Twenty-five acres on Joy Road between Wayne and Newburgh roads in Westland were purchased, and in 1986 the Hellenic Cultural Center was completed, with church services held there while a new sanctuary was built. The altar and other sacred fixtures from the Oakman Boulevard church were placed in storage until construction of the permanent Westland church was finished in 1996, when they were reinstalled in the new sanctuary, connecting the new building tangibly to the community's Detroit origins.

Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Westland serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Wayne and western Washtenaw Counties as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Detroit within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.