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The Carpatho-Rusyn Society has purchased the historic former Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Munhall, Pennsylvania to convert it into the nation's first National Carpatho-Rusyn Cultural Center.
The historic structure was the first cathedral in America exclusively for Carpatho-Rusyns. It was built in 1903 at the corner of Tenth and Dickson Streets in Munhall, just outside of Pittsburgh. Designed by the famous Hungarian architect, Titus de Bobula, and patterned after the Rusyn Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Uzhorod, Subcarpathian Rus. The parish was established in 1897 and the church, the parish's second, was built in 1903. By the 1920's the congregation had more than 700 families. In 1929 it was chosen as the cathedral for the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Exarchate in America.
The congregation, then known as St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic parish, left the building in 1993 when it constructed a new suburban cathedral. In April 2004, the property was purchased by the Carpatho-Rusyn Society to create a home and center for the organization and culture.
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