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The Orthodox parish in San Francisco was founded on March 12, 1935 with the blessing of Patriarchal Exarch Metropolitan Veniamin (Fedchenkov). The temple was located on Divisadero Street. On July 24, 1960, the solemn consecration of the new St. Nicholas Cathedral took place on 15th Street in San Francisco. The consecration by the episcopal rite was performed by the Patriarchal Exarch, Metropolitan of North America and Aleutian Boris.

This building, built in 1919, was previously a Lutheran church

At the end of the 1960s, with the active mediation of Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov), ​​Archpriest Alexander Schmemann and a number of other well-known church figures, a compromise was reached with the North American Metropolis. On April 9, 1970, the Holy Synod of the Russian Church restored communion with the metropolitanate, lifting the bans from its hierarchs, and on April 10, by the patriarchal tomos, it granted autocephaly to the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in North America, which henceforth became known as the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) .

Some of the churches voluntarily remained part of the Moscow Patriarchate, including St. Nicholas Cathedral.