First Greek Church Might Be Torn Down: Congregation Hoping to Replace Original House of Worship With New Classrooms

By Debbie Gebolys, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

May 25–The first Greek Orthodox Church in Columbus could be a memory by early September.

Built in 1921 at 536 N. Park St., the church hasn’t been used in two years. It occupies space that could become expanded classrooms and meeting areas for the estimated 1,100 to 1,200 families who attend services at the adjoining Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral.

Parishioners have talked for the past seven years about the best alternatives, said John Bizios of the parish council. Since the cathedral at 555 N. High St. opened in 1990, few people have asked to use the old church for weddings or baptisms.

“We did have some services in there in the beginning,” Bizios said. “But within the last two years it hasn’t been used at all except during the festival.”

The Greek festival, which started in 1973 with a few families in the social hall of the old church, has grown into a Labor Day weekend tradition. An estimated 35,000 people attend the four-day event, which features Greek folk music, dancing and food.

At the conclusion of this year’s festival, church members want to demolish the church. But Downtown Commission members yesterday said plans for a three-story replacement building aren’t detailed enough.

“Ideally, we’d want them to renovate the existing building,” commission member Jana Maniace said. “But also we want to be open-minded and don’t want to stop their progress.”

Commissioners tabled the demolition request after architect George J. Kontogiannis, also a parish councilman, told Downtown overseers that some members of the congregation wanted to preserve the original building. Commissioners wanted more details on how church members decided against renovating.

Kontogiannis, who also designed the $7.5 million cathedral, proposed a $1.5 million building that would house church classrooms, meeting rooms, a bookstore and a small chapel.

“The windows were small and not at all evocative of a church,” Maniace said of the design for the replacement building. “It looked maybe not like a warehouse building, but just an institutional building that was not very artistic, very creative, certainly not up to par with the building they’re demolishing.”

Kontogiannis wasn’t available for comment.

Bizios said the old church houses a bookstore but it’s up a flight of stairs that some older volunteers can’t climb.

Classrooms in an adjacent building aren’t enough to accommodate the growing number of children who study there.

“We’ve just outgrown them,” Bizios said. “We looked at renovating the space, but it really was cost prohibitive. It was a very painful discussion.”

Church members have started removing religious icons from the church, and plans call for preserving and reusing at least some of the stained glass. A palladium window above the church entrance would go above the door of the new building, and some of the old church brick would be incorporated as well.

“We’re hoping to be able to preserve as much as we can,” Bizios said. “We don’t enter into a decision lightly to demolish our church. We want to replace it with a building that helps meet the needs of our children and helps grow our community.”

dgebolys@dispatch.com

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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