St. Mark's Catholic Church, 1040 Tenth Avenue West, Thomas, Jefferson County, AL

Significance: St. Mark's is possibly one of few churches constructed of bee-hive coke oven stone. The site contains a stone church, frame church, rectory, stone bandstand-gazebo and restrooms. At the turn of the century, Italians from tine, rural communities of Sicily and southern Italy had immigrated to the Birmingham District and, by 1905, 50 families lived in Thomas and East Thomas. The bishop of Mobile sent Father Canepa, a native of Genoa, to build a Catholic church at Thomas and the Republic Company donated land outside the original Thomas tract for the site of St. Mark's Catholic Church, the first Italian church in the South outside the district of New Orleans. Construction of the handsome church with a central entry and bell tower began in 1925, using stones from obsolete beehive ovens built by the Pioneer Company at the adjacent Thomas works. Additional historic buildings on the site include stone gazebo, bandstand and restrooms with Italian inscriptions and the original 1905 frame church, which was converted to a rectory in 1956.
Survey number: HABS AL-935