page_title: St. Mary's Catholic Church (Riverside, Iowa)
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: St. Mary's Catholic Church (Riverside, Iowa) / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: The interior Saint Mary's Church in Riverside, Iowa. It is a 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: The current church building (1907) is built of red brick in the Gothic Revival style. The structure follows a basilica plan with what appears to be transept wings on the exterior, however, they are not true structural features. The main facade is dominated by a tall central bell tower and spire. Each face of the tower has a clock in the gable at the top. Below the bell chamber surrounded by a round arch is a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Two shorter towers capped with pinnacles are located on the corners. There are three entrances across the front with octafoil windows, and above the side entrances are paired round arch windows with small octafoil windows above them. Decorative brickwork is found in the upper portions of the exterior walls. The single nave interior is seven bays in length with a rounded seven-sided apse at the far end. The building contains period stained glass windows, its original wooden altars and a pipe organ. The side altars are located within pointed arch alcoves. Two murals that were painted in oil over the side altars and the Twelve Apostles on the intradoses of the nave arches were completed in 1937. The building was somewhat altered when the basement was remodeled into a parish hall to accommodate an entrance and a staircase between the hall and the main body of the church on the west side of the building. The changes were designed to blend with the original building.
  The original church (1877) is a simple version of the Gothic Revival style. It is a front-gable, brick structure that was built on a stone foundation. The side elevations are five bays in length. They are divided by flat brick pilasters, and each bay has a tall lancet window in the center. The main facade is symmetrical and three bays across its width. The main entrance is located within a slightly projecting pavilion. Beneath the eaves is a line of corbelling. At one time the main entrance and the upper portions of the lancet windows were closed while the lower portion of the windows were filled in with glass block. A new entrance with a brick vestibule was created along the east side. A renovation in the early 21st century opened up the main entrance and the lancet windows, which were filled with tinted glass. A modern addition was added to the west side of the building to house religious education classes.
  The rectory (1908) is constructed of the same brick as the church. The two-story house is capped with a modest hipped roof, intersecting gables with partial cornice returns and a low hipped roof dormer on the west side. A one-story porch wraps around the southwest corner of the house. It features square brick piers, simple wooden spindle balustrade, and a shallow triangular pediment above the front steps. The house's window sills and lintels are concrete.
  The school (1912) is a two-story brick structure built on a Bedford limestone foundation. The nearly square-plan building is capped with a low hipped roof and projecting rafter ends beneath the eaves. It features a full-height frontispiece that slightly projects from the main block. The main entrance into the building is recessed in a round stone arch. Above the entrance is a Palladian window on the second floor. On the north side of the building is a secondary entrance located in a small, hipped-roof porch.
  The former convent (1889), no longer extant, was a two-story structure that was built of locally produced orange brick. It had a high hip roof with a broad deck that was once edged with iron cresting. The side elevations were six bays in length, and the walls on the south side of the building slightly extended beyond those of the northern half. A cupola was originally located on the southern end of the roof and later removed. The main entrance was also originally located on the south elevation before it was moved to the center of the east elevation.
caption: Church interior
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