★★★★★ 5.0
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Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
The year is 1947, and bulldozers are heading straight for this church... but wait, you're looking at the building that SHOULDN'T exist! Robert Moses demolished the original Our Lady of Mount Carmel to build his highway, and even the Bishop said "let the Italians go somewhere else." But this tough Brooklyn community said "NO WAY!" and rebuilt their church from scratch! Every July, you can watch 100 people carry a gigantic 78-foot tower weighing 2.5 TONS right down these Williamsburg streets - it's like watching superheroes lift a building! This isn't just any church, it's the house that Brooklyn stubbornness built!
Did You Know?
- The Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in East Harlem was built in 1884 by Italian immigrant laborers who worked on the church at night after their day jobs, with local women preparing food for the workers—a true community effort reflecting the devotion and resilience of New York’s early Italian immigrant community.
- The church’s statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is one of only a few in the world to have been formally crowned by papal decree; Pope St. Pius X even sent two emeralds from the Vatican to be set into the crown, and the 1904 coronation made it the third such event outside Europe—a rare honor that underscores the shrine’s international Marian significance.
- Every year on July 16, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, devoted women from Little Italy would walk barefoot to the shrine in East Harlem to fulfill vows made to the Virgin Mary, a tradition that highlights the deep cultural roots and personal piety connecting Manhattan’s Italian-American neighborhoods to this historic church.