page_title: St. Mary's Catholic Church (Riverside, Iowa)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: St. Mary's Catholic Church (Riverside, Iowa) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The first Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Riverside, Iowa. The building is now the parish hall. It is part of a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places that includes all the parish buildings.
context_page_description: St. Mary's Catholic Church is a parish church of the Diocese of Davenport. The church is located at the corner of St. Mary's and Washburn Streets in the town of Riverside, Iowa, United States. The entire parish complex forms an historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places as St. Mary's Parish Church Buildings. The designation includes the church building, rectory, the former church, and former school building. The former convent, which was included in the historical designation, is no longer in existence.
context_section_description: Catholicism came to the area that would become Riverside in 1846 when the Rev. John Alleman organized a parish named St. Vincent two miles west of the present town of Riverside, near the English River. With the help of the Schnoebelen and Edelstein families, he built a log church and laid out a townsite which was named Strassburg. Riverside was established after the Muscatine Western Railroad built a line in 1872 from Muscatine that passed along the north side of the English River. A small town named Yatton had been laid out south of the river in 1856. The townspeople moved across the river to be near the railroad and joined others in the establishing Riverside. As the number of German and Irish Catholics increased in Riverside it was decided to build a church in town.
  St. Mary's was established in 1876 with the Rev. William Purcell as pastor. The church building was constructed of brick produced and laid by H.L. Swift. The first Mass in the church was celebrated on Palm Sunday in 1877. At the time the parish was part of the Diocese of Dubuque. It transferred to the Diocese of Davenport when it was established five years later. A rectory was built in the 1880s to the north of the church.
  The parish has operated schools at different times throughout its history. The first parochial schools in the area were begun in Richmond, St. Vincent's, and St. Stanislaus. The children from Riverside generally went to Richmond for school, where Joseph Fuhrman was the teacher. The first grade school was started at St. Mary's in 1878 when a committee from the parish convinced Fuhrman to teach there rather than in Richmond, where classes were held under the gallery of the church. The next year classes for St. Mary's School were taught in the Tabernacle, a former Baptist church. When the Rev. A.J. Drexler was pastor, a combination school building and convent was constructed between 1888 and 1889 west of the church. Franciscan Sisters taught in the school from 1889 to 1902. They were replaced by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
  The 40-year pastorate of the Rev. Bernard Jacobsmeier began in 1905. He initiated a building program that began with the present church that was begun the year he arrived. It was built on the site of the rectory, which was removed. The original church was converted into a parish hall, and a second floor was added to create an auditorium. The following year a rectory, in matching brick, was built next to the church. The final building to round out the parish complex was a new school in 1912. After it was completed the combination school/convent was remodeled for exclusive use as a convent.
  The parish started supporting a high school the same year the new school was built. It was discontinued in 1960. The rest of the school remained in operation until 1969, when the grade school closed for the first time. When the Rev. Thomas Mohr was pastor the grade school reopened in 1978 and in 1980 there were 36 students enrolled in preschool to sixth grade. The Franciscan Sisters of Christ the Divine Teacher from Davenport began teaching in the school in the 1980s. Because of the financial burden and low enrollment, the school closed once more. The parish has subsequently sold the school building and the convent has been torn down and replaced by a parking lot.
  Since the late 1990s the parish has been clustered with Holy Trinity Parish in Richmond and St. Joseph Parish in Wellman. The pastor of the three parishes resides in the rectory at Riverside. The basement of the church was renovated into a parish hall during the pastorate of the Rev. John Gallagher. An addition was added onto the original church, now called St. Mary's Hall, and it too was renovated creating the St. Mary's Education Center when the Rev. Richard Adam was the pastor.
caption: Original church, now part of the St. Mary's Education Center
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