St. Theodosius Cathedral: Thirteen Domes Over Tremont
Near Cleveland, Ohio
The cluster of copper-green domes rising over the Tremont neighborhood belongs to Saint Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral, and it marks one of the most visible traces of the eastern European immigration wave that transformed Cleveland in the early nineteen hundreds.
The congregation dates to eighteen ninety-six, founded by a small group of Carpatho-Rusyns, people from a mountainous region straddling what is today western Ukraine and eastern Slovakia. Their religion was Greek Catholic, an Eastern rite in communion with Rome, but the community eventually moved into Russian Orthodoxy. They saved money through the first decade of the twentieth century and commissioned Cleveland architect Frederick C. Baird to design a proper cathedral.
Baird drew on photographs of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. The result, completed in nineteen thirteen at a cost of about seventy thousand dollars, is considered one of the finest examples of Russian ecclesiastical architecture in the United States. Thirteen domes crown the roofline, one large central onion dome surrounded by smaller domes of two sizes, representing Christ and the twelve apostles. The arrangement is visible from miles away on a clear day, a skyline feature as distinctly Cleveland as anything downtown.
Rumor, still circulating in the parish, holds that Czar Nicholas the Second contributed to the building fund. The historical record has not confirmed this, but the claim reflects how seriously Cleveland's Orthodox community understood its connections to the old country, even as that country was sliding toward revolution.
Saint Theodosius became the mother church of Orthodox parishes throughout the region. Its a cappella choir drew non-Russian Clevelanders to special services as early as the nineteen thirties, performing at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Film lovers may recognize the cathedral from the nineteen seventy-eight movie The Deer Hunter, where its domes framed a wedding reception that became one of the most discussed opening sequences in American cinema. The cathedral also appears in the title sequence of Major League. Two very different movies, same building, both reaching for something unmistakably Cleveland.
