St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church stood across Liberty Street from the South Tower of the World Trade Center. It was completely destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks when the South Tower collapsed. It was the only non-WTC building to be destroyed by the attacks.

Contents

The building that came to house the church was built around 1832. In 1916 Greek American immigrants started the congregation of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and in 1922 started to hold worship services at the Liberty Street location. The church building was only 22 feet wide, 56 feet long, and 35 feet tall and was easily dwarfed by the 110 story Twin Towers, which were completed in 1972 and 1973. Despite its small size and unusual location, the church had before the attacks a dedicated congregation of about 70 families led by Father John Romas. On Wednesdays the building was opened to the public and many people, including office workers from the towers and non-Greek Orthodox, would enter the quiet worship space for contemplation and prayer.

Among the church's most valuable physical possessions were some of the relics (remains) of St. Nicholas, St. Catherine, and St. Sava, which had been donated to the church by Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia. These relics were removed from their safe on holy days for veneration; they were never recovered after the attack.

The building was completely buried by the collapse of the South Tower. No one was inside when the church was destroyed. Very little of its content was ever recovered. Among what was eventually found were the damaged icons of St. Dionysios of Zakynthos and Zoodochos Pege and a handful of miscellaneous religious items.

The congregation members and Father Romas have temporarily relocated to St. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Brooklyn.

The plans for rebuilding the World Trade Center complex include building a new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church quite close to the original location. The church will again house a worshipping congregation. A museum will also be built for the projected large influx of visitors that will come to the site.

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.