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St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral was founded in 1887 by Rusyns immigrants as a Uniate church. Alexis Toth was the first resident priest of the church in 1989 who lead the church to being an Eastern Orthodox Church. It opened a missionary school in 1897 and in 1905 created the first Russian Orthodox seminary in the U.S.

History
Initially it served a population of Carptho-Russian immigrants in Minneapolis, who began arriving in 1877. By 1887 they numbered about eighty people total. Uniate or Greek Catholic which was Orthodox up until late sixteenth century, forced to unite with Roman Catholic Church. Carpatho-Russians lacked a church of their own in Minneapolis until 1887 when construction began on a simple wood frame structure. It was completed in 1889 and served until it burned in 1904. In 1989 Father Alexis Toth arrived from Czechoslovakia to first the first resident priest at which time the church switched from being a Catholic Church to Orthodox, as Toth, having previously been married was not given jurisdiction to work in the archdiocese.

He arrived on November 15, 1889, and by the 27th of that month was holding services at St. Mary's Greek Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Finding the church practically barren of furnishings and deeply in debt, he set about rectifying the situation, ultimately bringing the parish to a place of fiscal stability—all while never receiving a salary.

Saint Alexis Toth

Designed by Victor Cordella on the site of the old church. It was built at a cost of $40,000, of which $ 1, 029 was donated by Czar Nicholas II. The building remained empty and without boilers for heat unfurnished and undecorated for more than a year.

The parish was forced deeply in debt because of the cost of the new building. Gradually the church was furnished and decorated with central heating installed after the winter of 1907-08.

The church is brick clad with a tall tower in the center of the front facade, topped by a copper clad spire. This spire was blown off in a windstorm in 1967 and replaced. Over the crossing is a hexagonal drum capped by a hexagonal dome with a gold cross. The interior seats six hundred, though pews were not installed until 1934. A major redocoration was undertaken in 1982 and new front steps installed in 1979. The parish hall, designed by architect Benjamin Gingold, was erected in 1957.

Unitate church