Mount Carmel Church listed on the National Register of Historic Places
Article written by Ann Emmons and the National Register Nomination Committee and originally published in Andiamo! newspaper.
On April 3, 2017 the National Park Service, through its state agent History Colorado, designated Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church to the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural and historical significance. The church, historian Astrid Liverman wrote, is “a fine example of the Romanesque Revival style” and “exhibits long-standing and ongoing cultural significance to the state’s Italian-American community, and specifically to Denver’s Little Italy, for its enduring, multi-generational traditions and heritage transplanted directly from Italy.” Thus the National Park Service recognizes what parishioners have long known: Our Lady of Mount Carmel lies at the center of one of Denver and the West’s profoundly important stories of immigration, faith, and a resilient community’s embrace of the traditions of the old country and the opportunities of a new land.
The recent designation will surprise many who believed that the National Park Service and History Colorado had long ago recognized the church’s importance. In 2015, however, North Denver native and former parishioner Fran Coloroso Daly discovered that the church was not included on the list of federally recognized historic properties; a National Register of Historic Places designation had apparently been confused with the Colorado Landmark designation conferred on the church in 1977. Daly and former North Denver residents Sharon Losasso Johnson and Bob Kochevar organized as the National Register Nomination Committee and began the challenging process of securing federal recognition of the landmark church. They were assisted in this effort by Liverman, who wrote the nomination and ushered it through the review and designation process, and by current Mount Carmel pastor Rev. Hugh Guentner, O.S.M., who supported the committee’s efforts from the beginning.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel is well known in North Denver, but the story of its construction is one that federal recognition encourages us to repeat and to cherish. Until the 1960s, when Denver’s Italian Americans began to migrate from North Denver to the north suburbs, the voice of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was almost exclusively Italian. These immigrants initially settled in “The Bottoms” along the South Platte River and dedicated their first years in America to securing the funds to retrieve parents, siblings, wives, and children from the poverty that plagued southern Italy. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, called to Denver to bring “the holy joys” to “our poor emigrants,” wrote that in building Denver and the American West, “the hardest labour is reserved for the Italian worker.”
Our Lady of Mount Carmel is a spectacular crowning testament to this hard work. As they were financially able, and as they were joined by family, these Italian immigrants migrated from The Bottoms to what would become “The Italian Colony.” Here they found only the Irish Catholic St. Patrick’s Church, where priests did not speak their language and were unfamiliar with the Italian liturgy. In 1891 they organized as the Mount Carmel Society, under the leadership of Fr. Mariano Lepore, and devoted their considerable energy and less-considerable money to construction of a neighborhood church. Dedicated on Palm Sunday in 1894, this modest church burned down only four years later. As parishioners mourned, they rebuilt: more solidly, more substantially, of fire-proof brick and plaster; a church that would endure at the center of their and their American descendants’ lives. Bishop Nicholas Matz of the Archdiocese of Denver celebrated the Dedication Mass for the new Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on December 18, 1904.
Many of the benefits of federal recognition are tangible. The National Register Nomination provides a body of information for tourism and community promotion. Committee research also corrects long-standing misconceptions about church design, decoration, and construction. For example the statues are plaster and wood, not marble, as often reported, and thus more consistent with a working-class immigrant parish in the American West; the ceiling murals are not frescos, but elaborate canvas paintings imported from Italy and installed by Rev. Gaetano del Brusco, O.S.M., in the 1940s, with the help of parishioner Anthony Marzano; and the architect was not Frank Damascio of the neighboring St. Rocco Chapel but rather Frederick W. Paroth. In addition, with National Register listing, Our Lady of Mount Carmel became eligible for state and federal funding for preservation, education, site development, and acquisition of associated properties.
Other benefits are less tangible: federal recognition brings prestige to the church and honors the memory of the Italian people who worked to build the church -- structurally and spiritually. It is the hope of all involved that heightened local pride in and knowledge of the church’s significant role in the history of the community, Denver, and Colorado will further energize a vibrant, active parish for generations to come.
Our National Historic Commemorative Plaque
