A humble sanctuary reborn in grandeur
NEW YORK — Olga Pavlakos grew up going to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Manhattan. She was baptized there. Her parents were married there. She has memories of her father, who worked in restaurants, volunteering there on Sundays, and of celebrating Epiphany every January, when parishioners would walk to the Hudson River, toss a gold cross into the frigid water and watch divers plunge in to retrieve it.
“St. Nicholas has been part of my family my whole life,” said Pavlakos, a lawyer.
Her connection to St. Nicholas can be traced to her grandparents, who left Greece in the early 1900s and settled in lower Manhattan, then a bustling immigrant community. Residents there scraped together money and bought a tavern on Cedar Street that they converted to a place of worship, eventually adding a bell at the top.
As the decades passed and the modest buildings of the immigrant enclave gave way to the World Trade Center and other steel and glass towers of the financial district, many of the parishioners moved to other boroughs and beyond. But St. Nicholas managed to stay put. That is, until Sept. 11, 2001. The tiny church was obliterated during the terrorist attacks.
Twenty-one long and difficult years later, St. Nicholas has reopened. But it is no longer a humble church, exclusively for its parishioners. Its mission is larger, as is its splendor.
St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church & National Shrine, as it’s now called, has become a destination for all. It offers a bereavement center that will serve as a place for meditation and prayer for people of any faith. The structure itself cost $85 million and features white marble imported from the same quarry that provided stone for the Parthenon. The interior is decorated with icons hand-painted by a monk in Greece. The building sits proudly on an elevated plaza called Liberty Park, which overlooks the pools of the 9/11 Memorial. Its translucent dome glows at night.
More high-profile than the original saloon with a bell, the new church is a prominent expression of Orthodox Christianity in the city, and it is a source of great pride for the Greek American community.
For the few remaining longtime parishioners of St. Nicholas, there is relief that their beloved church has finally reopened. But now, their intimate community hub is a global destination, and some wonder about the future of their once tight-knit parish.
“Half the parishioners from before 2001 are gone,” said Peter Zaharatos, an architectural designer whose father, a furnituremaker and contractor, had helped renovate the old church in 1989.