St. Theodosius Cathedral: A Tremont Anchor and a Hollywood Set
Near Cleveland, Ohio
In the Tremont neighborhood on Cleveland's near west side, a cluster of thirteen onion domes rises above the old immigrant streets. St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral is considered one of the finest examples of Russian ecclesiastical architecture in the United States, and it got here because of a schism.
The parish was organized in eighteen ninety-six by Carpatho-Russians, Slavic immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian borderlands who had been worshipping at a Uniate church. When doctrinal tensions fractured that congregation, twenty-three men formed the Saint Nicholas Society on September twenty-eighth, eighteen ninety-six, and set out to build something of their own.
What they built, completed in nineteen thirteen, was extraordinary. Local architect Frederick C. Baird modeled the structure on the Church of Our Savior in Moscow, bringing in decorative paintings imported directly from Russia. The interior glows with iconographic detail. The exterior, with its thirteen domes representing Christ and the twelve apostles, announces itself across the Tremont skyline.
The cathedral drew international attention when director Michael Cimino filmed there in nineteen seventy-seven as the setting for the wedding scene at the opening of The Deer Hunter. That film, which starred Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep and won five Academy Awards including Best Picture, opens with a Russian Orthodox wedding filmed in full ceremonial detail inside these walls. If you've seen the film, you've seen this cathedral.
The building also appears in the opening credits of Major League, the nineteen eighty-nine baseball comedy set in Cleveland. Two very different films, the same onion domes. The cathedral remains an active parish and is open to visitors, a living landmark in a neighborhood that has become one of Cleveland's most architecturally rich.
