Zoodohos Peghe Greek Orthodox Church of Bronx

History

The Zoodohos Peghe Greek Orthodox Church of the Bronx is one of the oldest Greek Orthodox communities in the United States, its roots stretching back to the early 1900s when the first Greek immigrants settled in the Mott Haven and Melrose sections of the South Bronx. Those early Greeks worked in bakeries, meat markets, coffee shops, produce markets, and kafenia that clustered between Third Avenue and Prospect Avenue along 149th to 163rd Streets, creating a Greek-Italian-German neighborhood that pulsed with immigrant life.

In May 1912, the Greek American Institute was established at 985-989 Eagle Avenue near 161st Street and Third Avenue, receiving official recognition from the State of New York. It was the first Greek American school in the New York City area and the second in the entire country, a remarkable distinction for a community that had barely established itself. A chapel dedicated to Saint Nicholas was established alongside it. By the late 1920s a church was founded unofficially and dedicated to the Virgin Mary of Zoodohos Peghe, the Life-Giving Fountain, a beloved Byzantine title for the Theotokos rooted in the ancient spring sanctuary at Valoukli in Constantinople where miracles of healing had been recorded since the fifth century. The church first opened on the upper floor of a firehouse at 163rd Street and Forest Avenue before moving to a building on Forest Avenue. In 1931 a former Jewish synagogue at 860 Forest Avenue was purchased, with the first floor set aside for the church and the second floor converted into classrooms for the Greek American Institute. The church and school merged into a single entity under the title Hellenic Orthodox Community of the Bronx.

As Greek families migrated to the Pelham Bay, Throgs Neck, Country Club, Morris Park, Fordham, Kingsbridge, and Riverdale neighborhoods through the middle decades of the twentieth century, the community followed its membership. On May 2, 1976, Archbishop Iakovos officiated at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new community center, completed by September 1977. In November 1986, at a General Assembly meeting under the guidance of the Very Reverend Archimandrite Sylvester Berberis, parishioners voted to build a new church. On October 2, 1988, Archbishop Iakovos officiated at the groundbreaking under a great yellow and white tent, and the new church at 3573 Bruckner Boulevard in the Pelham Bay section was completed, giving the community the permanent and worthy house of worship it had long envisioned. On April 10, 2011, Archbishop Demetrios consecrated a Holy Water Fountain shrine dedicated to the Theotokos of Zoodohos Peghe within the church grounds, connecting the Bronx parish tangibly to the Byzantine sanctuary of the Life-Giving Fountain in Constantinople.

Zoodohos Peghe Greek Orthodox Church at 3573 Bruckner Boulevard in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx serves approximately 400 member families as a parish of the Direct Archdiocesan District of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a community that has been a beacon of Orthodoxy and Hellenic life in the borough for more than a century.