St. George Greek Orthodox Church of Southbridge

History

Saint George Greek Orthodox Church of Southbridge, Massachusetts was established in 1908 by Greek immigrants who had arrived in the town to work at the American Optical Company, one of the most significant optical manufacturing operations in the United States and the engine that drove Southbridge's economy through much of the twentieth century. In those earliest years the congregation met in private residences, as was the pattern for so many immigrant Orthodox communities across New England, before building their first church in 1910.

That first church building burned down in 1932, a loss the community met with characteristic determination. That same year the congregation purchased land from the Hamilton Woolen Mill on North Street and erected a new church in its place. Designed by George Glynou and built by F. X. Laliberte and Sons, the building is a single-story masonry structure in cruciform plan with a central cupola, typical of Greek Orthodox churches built in central Massachusetts during that period and a locally rare example of Byzantine and Greek Revival ecclesiastical architecture. The bell that hangs in the building, donated by the Hamilton Woolen Company, was made in 1860 in Troy, New York, giving the sanctuary one of its most distinctive and historic furnishings. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, recognized as the oldest Orthodox church in Southbridge and a significant example of Byzantine architecture in the region.

Saint George Greek Orthodox Church at 55 North Street in Southbridge serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the Southbridge area as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a community that has carried the Orthodox faith in the Blackstone Valley for more than a century and whose National Register church building stands as one of the most historically distinguished Orthodox houses of worship in central Massachusetts.