St. Peter Greek Orthodox Church of Danville

History

Saint Peter's Greek Orthodox Church of Danville, Virginia carries a founding story as distinctive as any in the American South. By 1943, with Danville's Greek population growing, trustees for the congregation of Greek Orthodox worshippers announced the acquisition of a site for the future construction of a church. The lot was purchased from the estate of Dr. Bruce James on Main Street. Prior to construction, the community gathered for worship, religious instruction, Greek language classes, and study of Hellenic history in the basement of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany across the street, a gesture of ecumenical hospitality that speaks to the warmth with which the broader Danville community received its Greek neighbors.

The families who formed this community came from Danville, Schoolfield, Martinsville, and South Boston, a wide geographic reach that reflected how spread out the Greek population of southside Virginia had become. The congregation chose architect Robert W. Thompson to design the building, and Thompson selected stone quarried in Crab Orchard, Tennessee to construct it in a Gothic Revival style. Construction began in March 1946, and the cornerstone was laid six months later on September 18, 1946, in a ceremony held across the street at the Episcopal church to accommodate the attendance of school children. The event shut down most of the cafes and restaurants in the area, because so many of the restaurant owners in Danville were Greek.

The building was estimated to cost approximately $28,000 but wartime inflation drove the final cost to nearly $40,000. When the time came to name the church, the trustees devised a memorable solution: they sold the naming right at public auction. Peter Maurakis won the honor with a bid of $3,300 and chose the name of his patron saint, Saint Peter the Apostle, giving the parish its identity to this day.

Saint Peter's Greek Orthodox Church at 116 Jefferson Avenue in Danville serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of southside Virginia as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of New Jersey within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.