(ESSAY) It’s impossible not to notice St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in case you pass by the  World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. That’s not because it is particularly tall — especially next to much taller buildings that define New York City’s essence — but because something just profoundly sets it apart from the city’s usual mundane, gray backdrop.

Measured against all the concrete, the building itself is eye-catchingly white — and there is not that much that stands out about its exterior other than being very, very white, almost resembling a porcelain object such as a tea set or a doll. 

Had I not known that it was a church prior to visiting, I would have never guessed it. The tiny golden cross atop the dome is completely invisible and devoured by the grandeur that the rest of the building presents.

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The interior absolutely lived up to all the first impressions I had: St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church could very well be a dynamic and beautiful visual arts center. Its hallway is exclusively draped in white; the glass ceiling placed right in the center overlooks the chamber where religious ceremonies take place, and it looks nothing short of a painting. 

On one of the walls, I read that the mind behind all of this great works was Santiago Calatrava — acclaimed Spanish architect, sculptor and painter who designed the Oculus, the massive transit station and shopping mall structure located a few hundred meters from the church. 

The doorman, quite perplexed by my visit at first, told me that the interior paintings were made by a Greek iconographer and were actually transported straight from Greece and installed by the priest, who is a monk at a 1,000-year-old monastery. The biggest surprise to me was the revelation about the origin of all the marble present in the church: It’s the same Pantelic marble stones used in the creation of Parthenon.

The chamber where religious services are performed is less white, with the variety of Orthodox iconography on its walls. The center painting depicts Virgin Mary above New York City’s skyline — protecting and guiding the city’s residents. The room is not as spacious as it looks from a distance and perfectly fits into the overall gallery-like atmosphere with its vivid images and bright lights shooting from above.

According to the official website of Santiago Calatrava, the whole church was constructed in agreement with the vision of the 95-year-old primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, Archbishop Demetrios: “The design for the church must respect the traditions and liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church, but at the same time must reflect the fact that we are living in the 21st century,” he said. 

The church checks all the desired boxes; however, it is worthy to mention that such great creativity and determination took $85 million and 21 years in the making.

The St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was founded by Greek immigrants to New York City in 1916 in a building that previously was a tavern for the Greek American community. And it stood still in lower Manhattan throughout the decades. 

“The little church stood in exactly the same location, 155 Cedar Street, witnessing the decades of growth and transformation around the financial centers of Wall Street and Battery Park,“ the church’s website says. “Even through the sixteen-acre construction of the original World Trade Center in the 1960s, the little church was an ever-present spiritual jewel, open to all. There are generations of New Yorkers who remember stopping by to light a candle, say a prayer, or sit quietly.” 

When Islamic terrorists hijacked airplanes and flew those planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, those massive steel towers fell. The terrorist act killed 2,996 people and sent dust, debris and destruction throughout lower Manhattan. The collapsing skyscraper of Tower 2 also crushed the humble St. Nicholas church. Thankfully, the church building was empty, and nobody got hurt.

The project to reconstruct this church took so long for a couple of reasons. The first and most obvious one is the delayed mobilization of funds. Initially, the Port Authority of New York and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. each committed $10 million to the rebuilding project. Many parishioners were also trying to collect money to reopen the church, but they were not successful as the building plans and costs continued to balloon and become delayed. Lawsuits and contract squabbles multiplied over the years. The expenses to rebuild the church kept climbing up to $85 million, an unusually high cost for a small house of worship. 

Secondly, as the doorman informed me, due to its very prime location, there were many hurdles and politics around the rebuilding of the church. A reading of news clips about the long gestation of the church show that various fundraising delays and construction holdups thwarted progress at times. Greek Orthodox leaders got involved in the politics and debate around an Islamic center some wanted to build in lower Manhattan around 2010. The proposed Islamic center received a firestorm reception, and the reaction by many New Yorkers helped fuel some momentum for the reconstruction of St. Nicholas. 

All of these were pointless as the church finally gathered the political approvals, engineering and construction resources and the finances to pay for the project. The church opened its doors for a consecration in July 2022 and to the public for services in December 2022.

For a while, I could not make up my mind if I supported the idea of a house of worship that cost as much as this one does. I could not understand how the need to make it look a certain way was more important than giving Orthodox Greek Americans their sense of belonging, the space for praying and worshipping. But when I accidentally passed by this building on another occasion (this time it was evening and the church was glowing like a firefly in the midst of all the other buildings that emitted much darker and gloomier light), I could understand the philosophy behind it.

It is very much about Greeks, their extensive culture, history, and how they prefer to present their identity in the ever-growing city. This church simply attracts our attention the way none of its surroundings can; it puts us under its spell and stands out the way the Parthenon does on the Athenian Acropolis — completely shifting our focus to its beautiful pillars and roof — as if nothing had ever been worthy of our attention before.

Mariam Razmadze is an intern at ReligionUnplugged.com and the spring 2023 Arne Fjeldstad scholar at the NYC Semester in Journalism program at The King’s College in NYC. She is student in communication and media at Corvinus University of Budapest.