NEW YORK – New York’s new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, opened for worship on Tuesday after years of delays, replacing and re-interpreting the one church destroyed in the 9/11 attacks on 2001.
“Seeing the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas and the National Shrine finally open to the public is an emblematic occasion for Lower Manhattan’s promising future and marked past,” Calatrava, who is the author of another historic building in the area of the World Trade Center, the Oculus, home to a large shopping mall.
Worship began on the day of its patron saint, Saint Nicholas, although the church was consecrated on July 4, Independence Day of the United States, and has been open on a few occasions since.
The building sports a marble exterior of the same origin as that used in the Parthenon in Athens, a dome made of stone slabs and glass panels that are illuminated so that the church appears to glow from within, plus four towers around it which give it a typical Greek cross shape of Orthodox temples.
It is a Byzantine-inspired church, both in its architectural elements and the art within, and its design has nothing to do with the original temple destroyed in that attack.
The project, which began in 2013 at an estimated cost of $20 million, began the following year with a groundbreaking ceremony, is expected to be completed in two years, but has been delayed due to problems with the Greek Orthodox archdiocese’s financiers of America, who funded it.
Construction was halted between 2017 and late 2018, when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – which owns the land it stands on – offered to help with the rent, and an NGO called Friends later joined. of St. Nicholas. work will resume in mid-2020, according to local media.
The cost has risen over the years, and Friends of St. Nicholas – sponsored by former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo – indicates on its site dedicated to the church that donations for reconstruction – including those from the government of Greece – have been equal to 95 million dollars.
