St. Joseph Church is a former Byzantine Catholic church in the Union-Miles Park neighbourhood in Cleveland, Ohio. The congregation which would later be known as St. Joseph Byzantine Catholic Church formed in 1909, and built a small, wood-frame church at 9321 Orleans Avenue in 1913.
The church closed in 1980 because of a declining congregation and was repurposed for another church before becoming abandoned around 2002. The church building was demolished in 2016.
History
The congregation which would later be known as St. Joseph Byzantine Catholic Church formed in 1909, and built a small, wood-frame church at 9321 Orleans Avenue in 1913.
In 1933, St. Joseph Byzantine built a new, much larger church home next to its existing small wood-frame structure. This Romanesque Revival structure featured two towers with copper domes and extensive interior mural paintings. Concordia Lutheran also expanded the same year, significantly enlarging its church.
In 1955 St. Joseph Byzantine Catholic Church began construction on a $400,000 ($3,900,000 in 2020 dollars), eight-room school and parish rectory. The structures were completed in 1957, and the original 1913 church demolished.
In the fall of 1961, the new St. John Byzantine Central Catholic High School opened in suburban Parma, which featured 16 classrooms, laboratories, and workshops. 8 Originally planned as an elementary school, the facility was built at the Byzantine Catholic Center.
The 1980 recession and the early 1980s recession both hit Union–Miles Park hard, leaving the community with 25 percent of its residents living below the federal poverty line. The congregation at St. Joseph Byzantine moved to the suburbs in April 1980, selling its building to Greater Zion Hill Baptist Church.
Greater Zion Hill Baptist Church sold the St. Joseph Byzantine building and adjacent school to the House of Glory Church in 2002. House of Glory sold the church (but not the school) to Greater Tabernacle Church in 2010. Greater Tabernacle Church abandoned the structure at some point thereafter, and it was demolished in February 2016.
