St. Elpis Parish History

About Our Parish

As early as 1910, Orthodox immigrants began arriving in Southside Virginia. Bound by their faith, Greeks, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Russians, Serbians, Syrians, Turks, Bulgarians, and Romanians lived and worked closely together in the restaurants, green grocers, boarding houses, and factories of Petersburg and City Point Hopewell.

 

Longing for spiritual community, they also worshipped together, with the first mentions of regular Orthodox services occurring in 1914. By 1915, there were an estimated 20,000 Greeks living in the area, approximately 1/3 of the total population.

Construction on an Orthodox church in City Point (Hopewell) in 1915 was quickly derailed by the Great Hopewell Fire in December of that year. Despite the decimation of the fire, Epiphany services were still held in an open lot on Cawson Street in January 1916, continuing there and in rebuilt community halls and theaters until the founding of the Hellenic Ekklesia Saint Elpis in 1917.

Construction re-commenced in April 1917 on land provided by Greek boarding house owners on Dolin Street. The onset of WWI and the Balkan Wars called vast numbers of Greeks living in Southside Virginia home to fight for the Greek military and construction was abandoned in 1919. Throughout this time, the St. Elpis community worked to keep the church open, and around 1928 construction was completed on a neo-Byzantine structure.

In the late 1950s it was discovered that the early years of stop-start construction were not kind to the building and it would need to be overhauled and demolished. A new church was constructed on the adjacent lot in 1969, which still stands today, one of only a few truly Midcentury Modern Greek Orthodox churches in the United States.

Throughout the years, St. Elpis has opened its doors to welcome Orthodox parishioners from all backgrounds - Greek, Cypriot, Ethiopian, Syrian, Ukrainian, Russian, Lebanese, and American.