Saint George Ukrainian Catholic Church

The first Ukrainian rite liturgy in the city of New York was performed only a few blocks away from today's St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church, in the basement of St. Brigid's Roman Catholic Church on the southeast corner of East 8th Street and Avenue B. the former Baptist Tabernacle would be converted to accommodate a layout for Byzantine style services and was dedicated to Saint George. By 1911, the congregation had grown to the extent that a larger building was needed, and the parish proceeded to purchase the Seventh Street Methodist Episcopal Church, also known as the Bowery Village Church. The Bowery Village Church was originally built in the 1840s to serve an immigrant population in Little Germany, which had rapidly declined after the General Slocum steamboat fire resulted in the tragic loss of over 1,000 German Americans in 1904. After its purchase by the Ukrainian community, it too was adapted to accommodate Byzantine-Slav services. The AIA Guide (Fifth Edition, 2010) clarified that that church was built in 1840 and demolished in 1976 "to provide off-street parking for the congregation's new building next door." ==Present church==

The building currently inhabited by the parish of St. George was built between 1976 and 1978 to designs by architect Apollinaire Osadca. Prior to construction, Mr. Osadca touted his designs as "based on ancient Ukrainian Byzantine style, which survived in Ukraine, despite western European trends." From 1980 until his death in 2012, Andrij Dobriansky, a principal artist with the Metropolitan Opera, was the liturgical cantor as well as the director of the Andrey Sheptytsky choir at Saint George Ukrainian Catholic Church. In 2016, his legacy of Ukrainian liturgical singing at the church was documented by his children on the PBS series Bare Feet in NYC. == See also ==