History of the Greeks in Baltimore

The history of the Greeks in Baltimore dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Baltimore is home to one of the largest Greek American communities in the United States. The community is centered in the Greektown and Highlandtown neighborhoods of East Baltimore.

In 1920, 699 foreign-born White people in Baltimore spoke the Greek language.

In 1940, around 1,200 Greek-Americans lived in Baltimore. In the same year 1,193 immigrants from Greece lived in Baltimore. These immigrants comprised 2% of the city's foreign-born white population.

The Greek community in the Baltimore metropolitan area numbered 16,764 as of 2000, making up 0.7 percent of the area's population. In the same year Baltimore city's Greek population was 2,693, 0.4% of the city's population.

In 2013, an estimated 2,611 Greek-Americans resided in Baltimore city, 0.4% of the population.

As of September 2014, immigrants from Greece were the twenty-fourth largest foreign-born population in Baltimore and the Greek language was the ninth most commonly spoken language other than English.

The first Greeks in Baltimore were nine young boys who arrived as refugees of the Chios Massacre, the slaughter of tens of thousands of Greeks on the island of Chios at the hands of the Ottomans during the Greek War of Independence.

Immigrants from Greece first started to settle in Baltimore in large numbers during the 1890s.

Early Greek settlers established the Greek Orthodox Church “Evangelismos” in 1906 and the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation in 1909.

By the 1920s, a vibrant yet small Greek community had been firmly established. The St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was built to serve this growing community.

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