Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
473 East 115th Street | also 438 East 116th Street | East Harlem | built 1961
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1884
The Pallottine fathers lay the cornerstone of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Father Emil Kirner of the Pallottine order founded the parish in 1884, and its cornerstone was laid on September 20 that year. The church was finished in 1885 but did not formally open until August 7, 1887. Filled by Italian and Bohemian newcomers, it became the city's second Italian parish and its first Southern Italian one. Today Polish Pallottine priests say Mass in English, Spanish, Polish, Haitian Creole and Latin.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1887
The completed church formally opens on East 115th Street
The Pallottine fathers' new church, begun after Father Emil Kirner laid its cornerstone in September 1884, formally opened on August 7, 1887, at a construction cost of about $40,000. The parish had already been marking its devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel with an outdoor feast since 1881, years before the building was finished. Parishioners held Mass elsewhere until a shrine on the site was completed in 1885.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1904
The parish's statue of the Madonna receives a papal coronation
The church's vested statue of the Virgin was brought over by Antonio Petrucci, a saloon keeper from Polla, Italy. Pope Leo XIII approved its canonical coronation in 1903, and the ceremony took place on July 10, 1904, in nearby Thomas Jefferson Park to hold the crowds. The July 16 feast once drew more than 100,000 people, and the Giglio Society still dances its giglio tower each August.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1965
The parish adds a new school and gymnasium
On September 1, 1965, Our Lady of Mount Carmel opened a new school and gymnasium next to the church, expanding the Pallottine parish's campus on East 115th Street. The addition came six decades after the parish's shrine to the Madonna received its papal coronation in 1904. The parish continued anchoring East Harlem's Italian-American community as the neighborhood's demographics shifted around it.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2013
Cardinal Dolan places the old Italian parish under Polish Pallottine fathers
A couple of months before July 2013, the East Harlem sanctuary is placed under the care of the Polish Pallottine order. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop, had named the Rev. Marian Wierzchowski pastor and administrator in December. The parish, founded in 1884 by a German Pallottine but long seen as Italian, then counted only about 300 parishioners as the Italian community had moved elsewhere and elderly priests died.
Source: voicesofny.org
- 2013
The July feast brings fifteen services in several languages, including a Polish Mass
On the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the sanctuary offers fifteen services through the day, among them a Mass in Polish. The celebration began days earlier with three evenings of novenas in French for Haitians, in Spanish and in Italian, plus prayers in English. Father Wierzchowski hopes Polish speakers from across the city will come, and says Polish Masses will be held on Sundays after the feast.
Source: voicesofny.org
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