Built between 1899 and 1904, the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic church was a hub for the Italian community on Denver’s Northside and beyond. Denver saw Italians settling here as early as the 1850s. The tight knit community drew immigrants from both Northern and Southern Italy to the specific section of Navajo Street between 32nd and 38th Avenues where they lived, worked, socialized, and spoke their native Italian languages.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel was a gathering place, a place of celebration, and a place of mourning for Italians across the Denver metro area — even long after many moved away from the Northside, they still returned to the church to commemorate major milestones. This photo of the church is from 1977, the year the structure’s Romanesque Revival style architecture was listed as a Denver Landmark. With a still very active and vibrant congregation today, Our Lady of Mount Carmel honors its roots with “La Prima Domenica,” a full church service in Italian, on the first Sunday of every month.
