SAINT NICHOLAS PATRIARCHAL CATHEDRAL IN NEW YORK CITY
REPRESENTATION OF THE MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE IN THE USA- HIS HOLINESS PATRIARCH KIRILL
«In this great city a church has been erected,
worthy of the Russian nation and corresponding to the greatness of the Orthodox faith»
Saint Tikhon, 1902
The first Orthodox parish on the east coast of North America originated in New York in 1870.
The parish, located in a private house on Second Avenue, was visited by Greeks, Serbs, and Syrians, but mainly by employees of the consulate of the Russian Empire. The church was even called "consular". In 1894, Bishop Nicholas of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska founded a new home church in New York, consecrated in honor of St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker of Myra in Lycia.
At the end of the 19th century, when the flow of immigrants from Russia significantly increased, and the modest size of the home church was no longer suitable to accommodate everyone who wished to attend services, its rector, the future Hieromartyr Archpriest Alexander Hotovitsky, raised the issue of building a large cathedral in New York. With the blessing of the newly appointed Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska, Tikhon, later the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, in September 1899 a specially established committee acquired a plot of land of 150 yards on East 97th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenue, worth 72 thousand rubles. On this site, it was planned that a church would be built that would accommodate 900 people, along with a building for a Sunday school, a hall for celebratory meetings, and apartments for clergy. The construction cost was estimated at 114 thousand rubles or 57 thousand US dollars.
The cornerstone of the cathedral’s foundation
was installed on May 9th, 1901 (May 22 according to the new calendar), the day of the Transfer of the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. All along the procession from the church on Second Avenue to 97th Street, houses along the way were decorated with Russian and American flags. Bishop Tikhon blessed the cornerstone in the presence of thousands of believers. Present were also representatives of the Russian embassy who arrived from Washington, led by Count Cassini, Consul General Teplov in New York, officers and sailors of the battleship Retvizan under construction in Philadelphia, and the Mayor of New York, Seth Lowe.
A year and a half later, the best American construction company of that time, John Downey and Sons, under the supervision of architect Bergessen, erected the building of St. Nicholas Cathedral. The first service in the newly built church took place on November 23rd, 1902 (10 according to the new calendar).