Drive north out of Center City along the lower stretch of Franklin Street and a gold dome rises over the rowhouses, broad and burnished, visible from the lanes of Interstate 95. It belongs to the Ukrainians in Philadelphia, a community that has prayed, organised and buried its dead within a few blocks of that dome for well over a century. More than 60,000 people of Ukrainian descent now live across the Philadelphia area, the second largest such community in the United States after New York.
The Place
Northern Liberties sits just above Philadelphia’s old colonial core, a flat grid of brick that was, for most of the twentieth century, a working district of factories, docks and tight rows of affordable houses. It was the cheap rent and the nearness of the jobs that drew Eastern European newcomers here, walking distance from the mills and the river wharves.
Like other ethnic enclaves stitched into Pennsylvania’s industrial map, from the Italians of Norristown to the Jews of Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, the Ukrainians built their world around faith and mutual aid. Today the neighbourhood has gentrified hard, its warehouses turned to lofts and its corner taverns to craft bars. Yet the Ukrainian anchors remain: the cathedral, a social club older than most of the surrounding businesses, and a credit union a few streets west. The heart of Ukrainian Philadelphia has also spread north, into the Northeast neighbourhoods of Bustleton and Somerton and out to the leafy suburb of Jenkintown.
How It Became Ukrainian
The first Ukrainians reached Philadelphia at the end of the 1800s, many of them registered under the old name of Ruthenians. They came from the western Ukrainian lands then ruled by Austria-Hungary, and they settled in Northern Liberties because the work was close and the housing was cheap.
They were dock hands and factory labourers, and like other immigrant groups of the era they built their lives around the church. Around their parishes grew schools, choirs, reading rooms, sports teams, dance groups and fraternal societies, the whole apparatus of a transplanted nation crowded into a few city blocks.
A bishop arrives, 1907
The turning point came in 1907. On the recommendation of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, Pope Pius X appointed Soter Ortynsky the first Greek Catholic bishop in the United States. Consecrated in Lviv in May of that year, Ortynsky arrived in America on 27 August 1907 and made Philadelphia his see.
It was a foundational act. For the first time, Ukrainian Catholics in America had a bishop of their own rite. In 1911 Ortynsky founded an orphanage in the city, and that same year he invited the Sisters of the Order of Saint Basil the Great to come to Philadelphia and open a school at North 7th and Parrish Streets. He died in Philadelphia in 1916, but the institutions he planted outlived him by generations.
Clubs, credit and self-reliance
The settlers did not wait for the wider city to make room for them. In 1909 they opened the Ukrainian American Citizens’ Association, the first organisation of Ukrainian-American citizens in Philadelphia, on Franklin Street in Northern Liberties. The Ukrainian League of Philadelphia followed in 1917.
Money was the other problem. Traditional banks turned down loans to immigrants who had no credit history and lived in neighbourhoods the lenders deemed undesirable. So in 1952 the community founded its own credit union, beginning with 223 members and roughly 52,000 dollars in deposits. It would become the Ukrainian Selfreliance Federal Credit Union, an institution that has grown over the decades into a pillar of community life across the region.
The displaced persons, after 1945
The largest wave came after the Second World War, when Ukrainians fleeing Soviet rule arrived from the displaced persons camps of Europe. These newcomers were often educated, intensely political and determined to keep their nation alive in exile. They poured energy into the existing parishes and built new institutions on top of them.
In 1947 the Sisters of Saint Basil founded a college on their Fox Chase property just north of the city, first named St. Macrina College and later Manor College. It opened with eleven young women in an old farmhouse and was chartered by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1959. Its Ukrainian Heritage Studies Center followed in 1977.
Sport carried the same flag. Displaced Ukrainians founded the club known as Tryzub just after the war, and in 1959 it acquired the Philadelphia Nationals of the American Soccer League. Renamed the Philadelphia Ukrainian Nationals, the team won the U.S. Open Cup the following year and took four titles through the 1960s. Their 1966 victory remains the last Open Cup won by a Philadelphia-area team.
A new cathedral and a culture preserved
By the early 1960s the old cathedral, the former Methodist church Ortynsky’s predecessors had bought in 1907, was no longer adequate. Metropolitan Ambrose Senyshyn resolved to build a new one. The present Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was erected in 1966, designed by Julian K. Jastremsky and modelled on the Byzantine style of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The old cathedral was demolished in 1968.
The cultural infrastructure kept growing. The Voloshky Ukrainian Dance Ensemble and its school were founded in the early 1970s under the direction of Zoia Hraur Korsun. In 1980 the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center opened in Jenkintown, gathering more than thirty organisations, a library, a daycare and a Saturday school under one roof. Its Saturday school echoes the language classrooms found in other suburban Ukrainian enclaves, including the Ukrainian community in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania just up the road and the Ukrainians of Whippany, New Jersey.
The Landmarks
Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, 830 N. Franklin Street. The gold-domed mother church of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, built in 1966 in the manner of Hagia Sophia. Its dome is the single most visible marker of Ukrainian Philadelphia, glinting above Northern Liberties and the nearby interstate.
Ukrainian American Citizens’ Association, 847 N. Franklin Street. Known to everyone as the Ukie Club, it opened in 1909 and remains a neighbourhood fixture more than a century on. Generations have grown up around its friendly-priced bar and its adjacent soccer field, and it has long doubled as headquarters and host for Ukrainian benefits and refugee fundraisers.
Ukrainian Selfreliance Federal Credit Union, 2307 Brown Street. Founded in 1952 when ordinary banks would not lend to immigrants, the Philadelphia office sits a few blocks from the cathedral. The institution has since grown well beyond its first 223 members to serve the whole Ukrainian diaspora of the Delaware Valley.
Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center, 700 N. Cedar Road, Jenkintown. Opened in 1980, the centre houses more than thirty organisations, a Ukrainian library, a daycare and a K-12 Saturday school teaching language, literature, history and music. It is the cultural hub of Ukrainian life in the suburbs.
Manor College, Jenkintown. Founded in 1947 by the Sisters of Saint Basil the Great as St. Macrina College, it grew from eleven students in a farmhouse into a chartered college with a Ukrainian Heritage Studies Center, established in 1977. It remains a rare Ukrainian-Catholic college in the United States.
Ukrainian American Sport Center Tryzub, Horsham. In 1983 the club bought 38 acres of farmland in Horsham and turned it into a soccer venue with full-size fields, a clubhouse and picnic pavilions. It is home of the storied Ukrainian Nationals and host of a long-running Ukrainian folk festival each autumn.
NetCost Market, 11701 Bustleton Avenue. The big Eastern European supermarket on Bustleton Avenue is where the Northeast’s Ukrainian and Russian families shop for pierogi, stuffed cabbage and rye bread. A former restaurant chef runs a kitchen turning out pilafs, cutlets, salads and half a dozen soups a day.
Where They Came From
The earliest arrivals came chiefly from the western Ukrainian lands of Galicia and the Carpathian foothills, then under Austro-Hungarian rule, registered in American records as Ruthenians. They were peasants and labourers chasing the wages of America’s factories and docks.
The historian Nicholas Rudnytzky has described four distinct waves: the late nineteenth-century labourers, the political refugees who left after the First World War, the displaced persons who fled Soviet rule after 1945, and the economic migrants who arrived after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Each wave reshaped the community, layering political exiles and post-Soviet newcomers over the original factory families. The same layered pattern shaped older industrial settlements such as the Ukrainians of Cohoes, New York and the mill-town parishes that drew Ukrainian workers across the Northeast, much as the Ukrainian community in Sacramento, California grew from later western migration.
The most recent chapter began in February 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion sent a new generation of Ukrainians toward Philadelphia, many of them welcomed by relatives and parishes whose roots in the city reach back more than a hundred years.
Philadelphia Today
Northern Liberties has changed almost beyond recognition. The factories are gone, the rowhouses sell for sums the dock workers could never have imagined, and the bars around the cathedral cater to a young professional crowd. Yet the gold dome still rises over it all, and the Ukie Club still pours cheap beer for members who must, to this day, be of Ukrainian descent.
The living centre of the community has shifted. Much of it now sits in the Northeast neighbourhoods of Bustleton and Somerton and in the suburbs around Jenkintown, where the cultural centre, the credit union branches and Manor College anchor daily life. Borys Gudziak, installed as Archbishop-Metropolitan in 2019, leads an archeparchy whose congregations have swelled with wartime arrivals.
Since 2022 the war has pulled the community back into the open. Tryzub’s soccer fields have hosted fundraisers, the Ukie Club has run benefits, and the dance ensembles and Saturday schools have taken on the work of keeping a threatened culture intact. The Ukrainians in Philadelphia are no longer simply remembering Ukraine. They are actively sustaining it, from a few blocks of Franklin Street outward to the whole Delaware Valley.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do Ukrainians in Philadelphia live?
The historic core of the Ukrainians in Philadelphia is Northern Liberties, just north of Center City, home to the cathedral and the Ukie Club. Over time the community has spread into the Northeast neighbourhoods of Bustleton and Somerton and out to the suburb of Jenkintown.
How many Ukrainians live in the Philadelphia area?
More than 60,000 people of Ukrainian descent and Ukrainian immigrants live across the Philadelphia area. That makes it the second largest Ukrainian community in the United States, behind only New York City.
What is the gold-domed church in Northern Liberties?
It is the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at 830 N. Franklin Street, built in 1966 and modelled on the Byzantine architecture of Hagia Sophia. It is the seat of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia.
When did Ukrainians first settle in Philadelphia?
Ukrainians, then often called Ruthenians, began arriving at the end of the 1800s, drawn to Northern Liberties by factory and dock work and cheap rowhouse rents. The community took formal shape after 1907, when Bishop Soter Ortynsky made the city the see of the first Greek Catholic bishop in America.
What Ukrainian institutions can you visit today?
Key landmarks include the cathedral on Franklin Street, the Ukrainian American Citizens’ Association nearby, the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center and Manor College in Jenkintown, and the Tryzub sports centre in Horsham. The NetCost Market on Bustleton Avenue serves the Northeast’s Eastern European families.
How has the 2022 war affected Philadelphia’s Ukrainians?
Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 brought a fresh wave of refugees, many taken in by relatives and parishes with roots in the city stretching back more than a century. Community institutions, from Tryzub to the Ukie Club, have turned much of their energy toward fundraising and resettlement.
If your family’s story passed through Philadelphia, or any of the places Ukrainians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the villages of Galicia and the displaced persons camps of postwar Europe, to a gold dome rising over Franklin Street, to wherever you are now.