Mount Carmel Churches

Mount Carmel's churches record the changing populations and architectural fashions of the town (see p. 466). In 1869, the first Roman Catholic church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, was built of wood frame on 4th and Market streets by a German and Irish congregation. It was replaced in 1888 by a Gothic Revival brick church erected by Tyroleans and Lithuanians, which was renovated in 1905–1910 by Philadelphia architect George I. Lovatt Sr., who added Our Lady of Mount Carmel School. Successive waves of immigrants marked their arrival by building a church “on the Ave,” that is, West Avenue (PA 61). Most of these buildings are now in their second or third incarnation and less elaborate than their Victorian originals. The Gothic Revival Divine Redeemer Roman Catholic Church (former Our Mother of Consolation Church, 1906) at N. Poplar Street and West Avenue was designed by Philadelphians Milligan and Webber for a Polish congregation. The church with its illuminated clock tower is the first to greet visitors as they cross the viaduct into Mount Carmel. Across N. Poplar Street is St. Matthew's Lutheran Church (1888), the “Little Church on the Corner,” built by Slovak Lutherans. Equally picturesque, with its battery of onion domes and Byzantine crosses, is Sts. Peter and Paul Byzantine-Ukrainian Catholic Church (1914; 1994 rebuilt after a fire) at 131 N. Beech Street, which served immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian provinces of Galicia, Podcarpatska, Rus, and Ungvár. Another spirited onion-domed composition is St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Church (1908) at 131 N. Willow Street.