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The new St. Nicholas Cathedral was completed in 1904 and became the following year, 1905, the seat of the Diocese of the Aleutians and North America after transfer of the church headquarters from San Francisco to New York. Fr. [[Alexander Hotovitzky]], who was pastor of Church of St. Nicholas, continued his pastoral assignment at the cathedral until his return to Russia on [[February 26]], 1914.
After the Bolsheviks assumed power in Russia, Soviet controlled elements of the Church of Russia challenged the missionary diocese that had declared itself temporarily independent in the early 1920s over ownerhip of St Nicholas Cathedral. By New York State Appellate Court action the ownership of the cathedral was awarded to the Bolshevik controlled church , the [[Living Church]], in Russia. Over the following decades the cathedral functioned uneasily as the official church of an atheistic country.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, control of St Nicholas Cathedral passed to the freed Church of Russia under Patriarch [[Alexei II (Ridiger) of Moscow|Alexei II]]. Currently, St. Nicholas Cathedral is the seat of the Administrator of the Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA, Mercurius, Bishop of Zaraisk, Vicar Bishop to His Holiness, [[Kyrill I (Gundyayev) of Moscow|Kyrill]], Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.