Orthodox Christian churches tend to divide along national lines — Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, etc. Among the Russian Orthodox groups, there is a further subdivision, relating to the unusual spot in which the Russian Orthodox Church found itself when the Bolsheviks rose to power. The worldwide church was ruled by Moscow, and the communists installed compliant prelates around the world.

In New York, the official cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church used to be St. Nicholas, on 97th Street between Fifth and Madison avenues. Its construction, in 1901-02, had been sanctioned by Tsar Nicholas II, whom the communists executed in 1918. In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks sent over a new dean, the Reverend John Kedrovsky, whose presence deeply alienated many anti-communist members of the congregation — as well as leaders of other religious denominations around the country. This was big news at the time. The New York Times ran a story in 1923 with the sub-headline: “Episcopal Leader Fears Soviet Is Trying to Seize Russian Church in America.” When the St. Nicholas congregation rejected Kedrovsky’s leadership (they actually threw him bodily out of the church), New York courts stepped in to decide who controlled the Russian cathedral. (The courts said the church in Moscow did, in what would later be overturned as judicial overreach.) That’s when the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia came into being, as a denomination free of the influence and taint of the communists.

Early January brings the Orthodox Christmas (January 7) and New Year (January 14), so it is a good time to reflect on the history of the St. Nicholas Cathedral.

The first dean of St. Nicholas was the Reverend Alexander Hotovitsky. He welcomed President Theodore Roosevelt to St. Nicholas in celebration of the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Hotovitsky returned to Moscow to be bishop of Christ the Savior Cathedral. When Stalin later destroyed that cathedral, he exiled Hotovitsky to Siberia, where Hotovitsky died.

St. Nicholas itself is an exotic presence in Carnegie Hill. Of the architect, John Bergesen, we know little. The eclectic style cannot be labeled. Five onion domes sprout from the building. Onion domes originated in Russia’s Byzantine era, but in the 15th century the Russians invited an Italian architect, Aristotle Fioravanti, to design the Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow, thus beginning an integration of the traditional Russian forms with Italian classical detail. (Transfiguration Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Williamsburg is modeled after the Dormition.) We also associate onion domes with Islamic architecture. In its combination of onion domes, Romanesque and classical elements, gables, towers, arches, moldings, and glazed tiles, the cathedral belongs to the picturesque phase in the history of New York’s houses of worship, especially those on the Moorish side, like several of our synagogues (e.g., Eldridge Street, Park East). The vibrantly polychromatic interior with its murals, stencil work, and elaborate iconostasis has a Baroque sumptuousness. Overall, the cathedral seems to belong to a decade or two earlier. Montgomery Schuyler, the renowned architecture critic, called it “ugly and freakish.” We may think otherwise.