Inside an Abandoned Greek Orthodox Church in Detroit: a Collapsed Dome and Pews Left to Warp

I went into this one thinking it was the Detroit church that had the huge fire. It wasn’t. There was no smoke damage anywhere, which is how we figured out we had the wrong one, and the decay turned out to be the story anyway.

As I understand it, the final service here was held in 1977, and a newer church had been built in 1976 to replace it. The exact location stays off this page.

What we found

The door was wide open, with a 2x4 propped up to hold it. The office is the first room, and it still has a filing cabinet, a vacuum cleaner and a little playpen. There is a beer in there too.

The sanctuary is where it gets bad. The big dome has collapsed. Chains and metal pieces hang down from it and all the plaster is gone. The pews have fallen apart or warped, and there is pretty much nothing left on the floor but debris. The sunlight through the roof made a nasty glare, but the dome is still huge.

Off to the side was a board that reads Sunday School, with lines for attendance and offering. Not very many people used to go here, judging by the numbers. The carpet is completely decayed and a table had fallen apart. There were a few pieces that looked like basketball hoops, probably from outside.

The front doors are the nicest thing left. They have stained glass in them, blue and purple, and at one point they were chained shut. Now there is just a board behind them.

Looking up, you can see where the dome windows were, and some of the glass on the floor looks like it used to be blue.

On the stage I almost missed a baptism bath, which was right out in the open. The display cases around it are all broken, and what was left of the drum kit is there too. There is also a picture of Jesus that is completely falling apart. It is a very decayed church with not much left in it, so it is a short video. I said then that this place will definitely get demolished, because there is no way anyone restores it.

The staircase to the second floor was a little hidden, in a corner. Up there is a huge hole in the floor, and I said out loud that it was scary.

Why places like this end up empty

The part of this story I can trace is the roof. As I understand it, the copper was stripped from the dome in 2009, which let water pour in and sent the building into a fast decline. That matches a pattern in Detroit. In March 2014, thieves ripped copper piping out of a church on the east side, and the flood that followed ran for almost five days before the city could shut the water off. Classrooms, offices and the kitchen took on standing water, and the church put the damage at about $80,000.

Roofs are the target for the same reason. In October 2019, thieves took copper gutters and downspouts from another Detroit church and badly damaged its French tile roof. The pastor estimated over $200,000 in damage. A congregation that is already shrinking can rarely pay for that. A building that has lost its roof loses everything under it, one rain at a time.

The last thing I filmed was the hole in the second floor.