Mount Carmel Cemetery (Hillside, Illinois)
The Bishops' Mausoleum at Mount Carmel Cemetery.
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| Details | |
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| Established | 1901 |
| Location | Hillside, Illinois |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 41°51′51″N 87°54′27″W / 41.86417°N 87.90750°WCoordinates: 41°51′51″N 87°54′27″W / 41.86417°N 87.90750°W |
| Type | Roman Catholic |
| Owned by | Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago |
| Size | 214 acres (0.87 km2) |
| Number of graves | 226,275 |
| Website | Mount Carmel |
Mount Carmel Cemetery is a Roman Catholic cemetery located in the Chicago suburb of Hillside, Illinois. Mount Carmel is an active cemetery, located within the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. It is located near the Eisenhower Expressway (Interstate 290) at Wolf and Roosevelt Roads. Another Catholic cemetery, Queen of Heaven, is located immediately south of Mount Carmel, across Roosevelt Road.
Mount Carmel Cemetery was consecrated in 1901 and is currently 214 acres (0.87 km2) in size. It maintained its own office until 1965, when it combined operations with Queen of Heaven Cemetery. There are more than 226,275 remains at Mount Carmel and about 800 remains are interred there annually.
Mount Carmel Cemetery is also the final resting place of numerous local organized crime figures, the most notorious of these being Al Capone. In all, the cemetery grounds contain over 400 family mausoleums.
Many remains at the cemetery are people of Italian ancestry. The cemetery contains hundreds of headstones and monuments adorned with statues and elaborate engravings of religious figures such as Jesus, The Blessed Mother and many saints as well as angels. Many of the tombstones contain photographs of the inhabitants, reflecting a custom common in Italian cemeteries.
The cemetery contains Commonwealth war graves of two World War I soldiers of the Canadian Army.
The structure informally known as the Bishops' Mausoleum, designed by architect William J. Brinkmann, is located at Mount Carmel Cemetery and is the final resting places of the Bishops and Archbishops of Chicago; its formal name is the Mausoleum and Chapel of the Archbishops of Chicago, and it is the focal point of the entire cemetery, standing on high ground. The mausoleum was commissioned by Archbishop James Quigley and was constructed between 1905 and 1912. The roughly rectangular-shaped mausoleum has a stepped pyramidal roof surmounted by a statue of the Archangel Gabriel sounding his trumpet at the moment of the final resurrection. The mausoleum is designed as a Romanesque building outside with a domed Romanesque Classical chapel inside, complete with altar, religious murals, clerestory windows providing light, and the crypts flanking the altar on either side. The Papal and U.S. flags also flank the altar. Brinkmann did not design the lavish interior, however, although he was more than capable, as evidenced by his interior for Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica. Instead, Archbishop Quigley engaged one of the foremost religious architects of the day, Aristide Leonori, the noted for his 1899 design of the Mount St. Sepulchre Franciscan Monastery in Washington, D.C., as well as the interiors of early 20th century Mediterranean churches. For the mausoleum chapel interior, Leonori relied heavily on the use of marble and mosaics to give the chapel a Roman look while still referencing Celtic, Nordic and Slavic saints in the design, thus reflecting the archdiocese's many ethnic groups and national churches.
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