Maintaining a church building of such age is no easy task, and the parish of St. Sava was constantly faced with trying to keep up with the building's needs. In 1991, building conservator William Stivale prepared a master plan for the grouping which identified critical structural needs and presented a phased work program totaling almost $6,000,000 at that time. Over the past two decades, the Church has raised millions of dollars in grants and donations from its congregants and has borrowed a total of $725,000 in loans from the Historic Properties Fund to implement this plan. In 2014, the Cathedral was sued by a firm called Madison Equities after their purchase of the Cathedral's air rights fell through.

Despite alterations to the original building, St. Sava was placed on the list of New York Landmarks in 1968 and on National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

On Pascha Sunday, May 1, 2016, a fire was seen burning in St. Sava Cathedral. The blaze was enormous, and over 170 firefighters were dispatched to the scene to battle the fire. It remains unclear if any of the building can be saved. Because the cause of the fire is not immediately clear, the Fire Department of New York is treating it as 'suspicious'. As of [[May 2]] 2016, even as the fire department was still pouring water on the remains of St. Sava Cathedral, New York City Councilmember Corey Johnson reported that he already knew of expressed interest by a developer to use the land (and that of the remains of the adjacent Chelsea Flea Market) to build an 850-foot tower.  St. Sava Cathedral was not the only Orthodox Church to burn on Pascha 2016. In Australia, a church of the [[Macedonian Orthodox Diocese of Australia and New Zealand]] in the Rockdale area of Sydney, New South Wales was destroyed, and in Melbourne, Victoria, the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation sustained heavy fire damage.