Mount Carmel Triangle

Mount Carmel Triangle stands at the intersection of Union Avenue, Meeker Avenue, and Jackson Street as a quiet, green anchor for a neighborhood that looks quite different today than it did a century ago. This small plot of land serves as a memorial to the original Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, a center of religious and social life for thousands of Italian immigrants who settled in this area starting in the eighteen eighties. The original wooden church stood right at this corner, and later, a grander brick building took its place before the mid-century construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway forced its demolition. Today, the triangle preserves that history with a statue of the Virgin Mary, offering a glimpse of the community hub that once defined these streets before the highway viaduct fundamentally reshaped the landscape.