Style and Real Estate: The Architecture of Faith among Greek and Italian Immigrants, 1870–1925

The American metropolis during the era of great migration (1870–1925) contained a number of diverse minorities that collectively made up an immigrant majority. More than 40 percent of the adult population in cities like Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, or New York was foreign-born; adding their children (technically native-born citizens), the ethnic population made up 75–80 percent of those cities’ total population.¹ This urban majority was fragmented into sectarian, national, and linguistic units that worshipped in dependently. As Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out in 1968, eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour