This church may have been in the heart of Detroit’s Poletown, but it played a major role in the lives of Greek-Americans. It also was one of the many victims of the historic neighborhood’s erasure for a new General Motors plant in 1981.

A quick Byzantine primer

St. Nicholas Greek Catholic Church was part of the Byzantine Catholic Church, one of 23 self-governing Catholic rites inside the family of Catholicism. Like other rites, the Byzantine (also known as Constantinopolitan) rite is in union with the Roman Catholic Church and under the pope – it’s just that its members are more in line with the Orthodox tradition than the Roman.

The Byzantine church is rooted in Eastern Europe in a tradition known as Ruthenian, and follows the ancient Byzantine rites developed in Constantinople. In the 1880s and 1890s, Slovaks, Hungarians, Croatians, Romanians, Serbs, Germans and Greeks who followed the Byzantine tradition immigrated to Detroit in search of opportunity. They brought with them the practices and customs of their faith, most of which have more in common with the Roman church than not. For instance, a Byzantine Catholic can receive communion or give a confession at a Roman Catholic church and vice versa. The rites share the same sacraments and basic rites with some minor differences, such as priests in the Byzantine church being allowed to marry and the faithful celebrating the Divine Liturgy of the Holy Eucharist instead of Mass. Byzantine priests face the altar instead of the sanctuary, as they worship with the congregation instead of speaking to them. Another small difference is that the sanctuary in a Byzantine church is separated from the nave and altar with a solid screen called an iconostasis, which represents where heaven and Earth meet.

Another difference is that Detroit’s Byzantine congregations fell under the administration of the Pittsburgh Diocese, not the Archdiocese of Detroit. However, the worshippers still needed permission from the local bishop to set up their own church.

A home in Detroit

The St. Nicholas parish was founded by 15 to 20 immigrant families from a region of Eastern Europe then known as Carpathian Ruthenia. Even though they were under the Pittsburgh Diocese, they still needed permission from Detroit Bishop Michael J. Gallagher to establish their congregation, which Gallagher gave in 1921. They had been worshipping at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Church, a west side parish for Ukrainian Catholics of the Byzantine Rite. After that, they held services in St. Francis D'Assisi Catholic Church at Buchanan and Wesson streets, and Gallagher then let them use Holy Rosary Church on Woodward Avenue. Its first pastor was the Rev. Constantine Auroroff, a native of Russia who established a number of Byzantine parishes across the Midwest.

In the fall of 1922, the parishioners bought land on East Grand Boulevard between Jos Campau and Dubois Street. The congregation was small, so at first, it could afford to build only a basement chapel, which hosted the first Divine Liturgy in the parish’s own building on Christmas Day 1923. The parish also built a rectory at this time.

One of the more notable features in the chapel was its Gothic altar, the work of Andrew Plofchan of Detroit. Carved from gumwood, it measured 7 feet, 2 inches from end to end and rose only 48 inches high. In the center was a steel safe that protected the holy sacrament.

The Rev. John D. Taptich was appointed pastor in 1925, and, under his leadership, the parish paid off its debts on the basement chapel and rectory. The parish almost immediately started raising money to build a proper church atop their basement chapel. In 1930, the Rev. John Sokol became pastor, and would lead the parish for five years.

In 1935, the Rev. Thomas B. Sabow took charge of the congregation, and it would be his charge to get a proper church built for his flock.

Ground was broken for what was initially called the St. Nicholas Carpatho-Russian Greek Catholic Church on Aug. 21, 1938. The Rev. Father Stephen Chehansky, the Rev. Father Leo J. Sembratovich and Sabow led the ceremony. Sembratovich turned the spade while wearing his vestments. Its cornerstone was laid at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 6, 1938.

The church was built over the basement chapel that had served the congregation for 15 years. Designed by architect Arthur DesRosiers, the church was topped by a large tower and belfry and two small side towers. Faced with yellow brick, the church was 112 feet deep by 40 feet wide. It was expected to take six months to build and cost about $50,000, the equivalent of about $1.2 million in 2026, when adjusted for inflation.

When the church was dedicated Sept. 10, 1939, it marked the end of an 18-year effort by the parish to build a church of their own. Bishop Basil Takach of the Pittsburgh Greek Catholic diocese led a service after the ceremonies. The Rev. Father John Zavalla of Flint preached the sermon in English, and a banquet in the church hall was held after the dedication.

Changing times

St. Nicholas’ interior was redecorated in 1944 - just five years after it opened - and again in 1963, which saw biblical murals painted on the ceiling of the sanctuary. The newly redecorated church was blessed July 28, 1963, by the Most Rev. Nicholas T. Elko of the Byzantine Rite Exarchate of Pittsburgh.

On Oct. 17, 1948, the most Rev. Archbishop Arthenagoras Spyrou of Boston - head of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America - turned the spade at a groundbreaking for a new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at 17400 Second Ave., between Morton and Strathmoor avenues. The new church was to seat 800 people and cost $400,000 to build. This gave Detroit two Greek churches with the name St. Nicholas, one Greek Orthodox, one Byzantine Catholic.

In 1957, the congregation began discussing moving to the Five Mile and Beech Daly Road area in Redford Township. The church on East Grand Boulevard was serving members who were traveling up to 25 miles to attend services. Instead, the parish opted to stay put and open an auxiliary chapel. On June 30, 1957, the first Divine Liturgy was celebrated at the Sacred Heart Chapel of St. Nicholas Greek Catholic Church, located at 15534 Beech Daly Road. This gave the parish locations on both the west and east side.

By 1974, however, the Poletown neighborhood had started to show signs of decline, and much of the congregation didn’t live in the immediate area. The church’s pastor at the time, the Rev. Nicholas Ivan, decided to relocate his parish to the suburbs. Land was acquired in Macomb County for a new church, and in the meantime, the parish bought a former Protestant church at 19130 Beaconsfield St. (today known as Second Sweet Home Baptist Church) on Detroit’s far east side in the interim. The congregation moved the bell from East Grand Boulevard to its new home.

The parish of St. Nicholas Byzantine still exists today at 4700 Metropolitan Parkway in Sterling Heights.

Meanwhile, the congregation’s former home on East Grand Boulevard was taken over by the Temple of Faith Missionary Baptist Church, a fairly small congregation.

The Poletown massacre

As Detroit entered the 1980s, the city had been severely battered by 30 years of white flight and the loss of companies and jobs to the suburbs. It cannot be understated the challenges that the City was facing at this time. Detroit had lost more than 300,000 residents between 1970 and 1980 - a loss of 20.4 percent of its population in just 10 years. This led not only to blight and vacant buildings, but also a significant loss in tax revenue from city income taxes, which meant Mayor Coleman Young’s administration had less money to fund city services, which fed into a vicious cycle where even more people moved out of the city. The national economy was also weak coming out of the Carter years, which not only hit Detroiters’ pocketbooks but also meant fewer shifts on the assembly line as fewer cars were being sold.

On top of all that, General Motors told Young that it was going to close its Cadillac and Fleetwood plants in the city. The loss of thousands of jobs between them was going to make a dire situation even worse.

Young knew he had to stanch the bleeding and was desperate to keep the GM jobs that were on the chopping block.

Even though it would be cheaper to build out in the cornfields of suburbia, GM told Young that it would build a new plant in the city if he gave it a major tax break and assembled all the property needed for the plant. On top of that, GM gave the City less than a year to pull it off. The City offered nine sites – including 415 acres of Rouge Park, which would have seen the Rouge River rerouted. GM announced in July 1980 that it had picked Poletown, a half-Black, half-Polish community just south of the Polish enclave of Hamtramck, for the new 465-acre Cadillac assembly plant.

It would be the first new auto plant in the city of Detroit since 1928 - in more than half a century.

The residents of Poletown, however, were not going down without a fight. The battle for Poletown would play out on the front pages of the newspapers for more than a year. Residents protested, sued, staked out on their front porches with shotguns and locked themselves in Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and refused to leave. They hauled a bulldozer out to GM Chairman and CEO Roger Smith’s mansion in Bloomfield Hills so he could “see what it was like to have a bulldozer in his front yard.” Political activist Ralph Nader got involved, blasting the City for giving a $320 million package to the second richest company in the world for a plant that would be heavily automated, meaning the 6,000 promised jobs was exaggerated (it was - the 6,000 jobs at the new plant soon was reduced to 3,000).

But Detroit was on the clock to meet GM’s deadline, so it got to work quickly buying and razing properties like the old Dodge Main Plant, Hervey C. Parke Elementary School and St. Joseph Mercy Hospital on East Grand Boulevard. In all, the City forced more than 3,000 residents to move and demolished at least 1,100 homes, 144 businesses and 16 churches - including Temple Missionary Baptist - in about eight months.

Home owners got market value of their house plus bonuses on top, and renters got thousands, too. That led to “a lot of people to take the money and run” to the suburbs, said Bill McGraw, a former Detroit Free Press reporter who covered the Young administration. Those who stayed saw the vacant homes around them burned by arsonists (protesters accused the City of torching them to drive out the stragglers).

The City said it would cost $62 million (the equivalent of $223 million in 2026, when adjusted for inflation) to pay residents and businesses to leave, but it ended up costing more than three times that - $200 million, a staggering $720.3 million in 2026.

There was no way the cash-strapped City could pay that tab out of its general fund, so it took a huge loan from the feds. The Young administration pledged their federal appropriations to repay it. That took federal money away from neighborhoods, plunging other neighborhoods into decline and even further accelerating residents’ exodus from the city. The financial impact to the City would be felt for decades.

“It was highway robbery,” McGraw told HistoricDetroit.org. “Young thought it was important that Detroit have a modern plant to continue being the Motor City. … The promised jobs were cut in half. They said the plant was going to spur a lot of growth in the area, which, of course, it never did.”

Even if the Poletown plant saga will go down as a disaster, it was still an amazing feat that the City pulled off, and that earned the Young administration a reputation for being able to get tough deals done - even if it didn’t lead to other projects of a similar scale. Though that was probably a good thing.

Today, the controversial GM plant is known as Factory Zero.

Eminent domain and imminent pain

Throughout all the fighting over the plant plan, Victor W. Nelson, pastor of the Temple of Faith Church, remained a supporter of the proposal. At a rally at his church held March 21, 1981, Nelson told about 150 Poletown residents that the jobs created by the new assembly plant are more important than fighting to stay in a struggling neighborhood.

"When we march out of here, we'll go on to higher and higher things," Nelson told them, according to a March 23, 1981, article in The Detroit News. "This area has become a rundown place since GM announced its project. People have moved out. We know we're going to leave, and we want to show the city we're with it in this project."

Nelson said he sold the church to the CIty for $185,000, about $708,000 in 2026 money. He said his church was left in the red from the deal.

"The City bought the contents of the church for $13,000, and we even have to buy back the organ, pulpit, piano and other things,” he told The News. “Nobody wants to leave, but everybody has to. And we want the mayor to know we support him."

A year after the demolition dust had settled, The Detroit News tracked down a number of players in the battle for Poletown. Nelson's flock had moved to a small church at 14843 Coram St., between Seven Mile and State Fair Street. He told The News that he had lost most of his congregation in the move and was trying to start over.

"I didn't want to move, but I think the plant will benefit the city and give more people work," Nelson told The Detroit News for the July 11, 1982, article. "I hated to lose church members, but the community was deteriorating fast. …

"It's hard when you lose friends," he said. "You never can replace what you lost."

*Note: The Library of Congress' Historic American Buildings Survey says St. Nicholas parish went by the name St. Michael's Greek Catholic Church at one time, but St. Michael's was located at 3977 Livernois Ave., and was a different congregation. *