Celebrating 100 Years of Hungarian Cleveland's Iconic St. Emeric Church Building

Type of Abstract (select): Individual Presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
St. Emeric Church is often one of the first places people associate with Hungarian Cleveland. It is home to the city’s last Hungarian Roman Catholic parish community and is also known throughout Northeast Ohio as a Hungarian cultural center that houses the Cleveland Hungarian School, the Hungarian Scouts, and the Cleveland Hungarian Scout Folk Ensemble.

Organized in 1904, St. Emeric Parish recently celebrated the centennial of the dedication of its church building on September 7, 2025. To mark this major milestone, the parish published a commemorative book that both examines the history of the church building and presents a thorough catalog of the statuary, murals, stained glass windows, and other liturgical furnishings and their provenance. Drawing on historic maps, newspaper articles, and archival documents featured in the book, this presentation will trace the parish’s journey from its humble beginnings in a converted building on W. 24th Street to its grand Gothic second church lost to eminent domain, and finally to its third (and current) home, which has served Hungarian Catholics on the West Side of Cleveland for the last century.

The research undertaken for this book uncovered several inaccuracies regarding key events in the life of the parish, some of which have been repeatedly reported since the 1940s. Based on these findings, an appeal will be made to reexamine non-scholarly institutional histories with primary source materials.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Nicholas Boros has served as Upper School Mathematics Teacher at Hawken School in Gates Mills, Ohio since 2018. He completed his undergraduate studies in comparative religion, linguistics, and mathematics at Cleveland State University in 2015. His primary area of research focuses on the history of Eastern Orthodoxy in the United States, and he periodically works on projects related to the development of Hungarian Catholicism in America. Most recently, he served as the editor of the commemorative book published by St. Emeric Church for the centennial of its current building.