The Greek Community in Fort Worth: A Historical Overview

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Fort Worth’s north side became home to a community of Greek immigrants and their descendants. The first Greek immigrant to Fort Worth was Demetrios Anagnostakis from Crete, who arrived around 1893 and had aspirations of being a cowboy; he was employed at the Fort Worth Stockyards. Migrants from Greece and ethnic Greeks from modern-day Turkey began arriving in Fort Worth in greater numbers in the 1900s, with many of them working in the stockyards and the Swift and Armour meat packing plants adjacent to them. They lived primarily in row houses east of North Main Street, just south of the stockyards. The arrival of Greeks, particularly Anatolian Greeks, was driven in large part by opposition to the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which carried out a genocide against its Greek population during and after World War I. The Greek population in Fort Worth was also augmented by an influx of Greek immigrants who had been driven from Omaha, Nebraska, by a 1909 race riot and related anti-Greek violence. As in Fort Worth, many of the Greeks in Omaha had been employed in the city’s meat packing industry.

In 1911 the Greek population of Fort Worth was about 400. By the early 1910s the Greek residents included restaurant owners, confectioners, grocers, and other small business operators. Fort Worth’s northside was home to a number of other ethnic enclaves—including Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Poles, Romani, and Mexicans. For many years George Dimitri, a Greek polyglot, headed an informal “court” that managed disputes between residents.

Social Institutions and Community Life

In 1910 the St. Demetrios Eastern Greek Orthodox Church was chartered under the direction of Fr. Christos Angelopoulos. It was the first Greek Orthodox church in Texas, predating the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Houston, and was only the second west of the Mississippi River (the first was in Omaha). The organizers included confectioner Basil G. Booth (shortened from Boothounis), grocer Jim Metaras, and Nick Gavrelos (Gavril). The congregation initially met in a rented space in downtown Fort Worth. The congregation disbanded for a time because a number of immigrants, most of whom were young men, traveled back to Europe in 1912 to fight in the First Balkan War, which secured Greece’s independence from the Ottoman Empire. By 1916 the Greek population of Fort Worth numbered approximately 600 and included many families. Some Greek businessmen purchased land for a church building at Tenth and Cherry streets southwest of downtown, though no church was built there. Because the majority of parishioners lived north of the river, they campaigned for a new church site on the north side of the city. Designed by Fort Worth architect Louis B. Weinman and completed in 1917, the Byzantine-style brick church was located at Ross Avenue and Northwest Twenty-first Street. The first priest was Damianos Ermogenis, and services were held primarily in Greek. The church later established afterschool Greek language classes for children of parishioners. For decades this church acted as the center of religious and social life for the Greek residents and their descendants.

Other important social institutions among the Greek community were the local chapters of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), a fraternal secret society; the Daughters of Penelope, for wives and daughters of AHEPA members; the Sons of Pericles, for sons of AHEPA members; and the Athena, a social club. The AHEPA chapter was organized in May 1923. Members were required to be American citizens and meetings were held exclusively in English.

Farming and Business Ventures

By the 1930s many Fort Worth Greeks who had worked in the meat packing houses had transitioned to farming along the Trinity River, north of downtown and south of the stockyards. These river bottoms were prone to flooding, but the land was inexpensive and fertile, and truck farming became the principal occupation of Fort Worth’s Greek population. There also remained a number of small business and restaurant owners and a growing middle class that expanded into other occupations. Among the most notable Greek-owned businesses was Famous Hamburgers, which opened in 1921 as “G&G Hamburgers” (after co-owners George Koutsoubos and Gus Voutis) and was operated by the Koutsoubos family until 1986. During the Great Depression, the Texas Writers Project noted that the roughly 1,400 Fort Worth Greeks were “so Americanized that it is difficult to distinguish them from the average inhabitants.” It was also claimed that 90 percent of Greeks owned their homes, that 95 percent were educated, and that living standards were higher than those among other immigrant groups.

Greek Community Since the Great Depression

The Greek community maintained strong ties with relatives back in Greece. During World War II the Fort Worth AHEPA chapter raised relief funds for civilians in Nazi-occupied Greece and bought war bonds. The community continued its relief efforts during the Greek Civil War that followed in the mid and late 1940s.

Due to river widening initiatives, highway construction, and urban and residential encroachment, the number of Fort Worth Greeks who operated farms along the Trinity gradually declined, but residents of Greek descent remained active within the city. In 1947 the Greek community organized the Greek-American Youth Club. In the late 1960s what began as a community bake sale, organized by members of St. Demetrios Church, expanded into a three-day Greek food festival. The festival was held annually every November at the church. In 1982 the St. Demetrios Community Center was opened. In 2002 a new sanctuary was completed off Jacksboro Highway at 2020 Northwest Twenty-first Street, about a mile west of the old location. The new church is located near the Trinity River bottoms where many Greek families once farmed the land.