St. Mary's Catholic Church - Riverside IA - Stained Glass Windows on Waymarking.com

St. Mary's Catholic Church, Riverside IA, was built in 1907. The stained glass is spectacular, photos don't due them justice. We were told the stained glass was imported from Italy. The original pipe organ is still used.



There was a nice write up in wikipedia:







Catholicism came to the area that would become Riverside in 1846 when the Rev. John George Alleman organized a parish named St. Vincent, which was two miles west of the present town of Riverside, near the English River. With the help of the Schnoebalen and Edelstein families, he built a log church and laid out a town site which was named Strassburg.[2]
St. Mary's Catholic Church from the Southeast as of December 2013

St. Mary’s was established in 1876, four years after the town of Riverside had been established. At the time the parish was part of the Diocese of Dubuque, and was transferred to the Diocese of Davenport when it was established five years later. The current church building was constructed in 1907. [3] It is built of red brick in the Gothic Revival style. It features decorative brickwork, three entrances across the front and a central bell tower and spire. The building contains period stained glass windows, its original wooden altars and a pipe organ. A parish hall was built in the basement of the church in the 1990s. The building was somewhat altered at the time 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 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.[4] A school building was constructed in 1888. Franciscan Sisters taught in the school from 1889-1902. They were replaced by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary who then staffed the school until 1969, when the grade school closed for the first time. New school buildings were constructed in 1912 and the parish started supporting a high school the same year. The high school closed in 1960.[5] The grade school reopened in 1978 and in 1980 there were 36 students enrolled.[6] 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.

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.

Type of building where window is located: Church Address: St. Marys St. Riverside, IA Days of Operation: Sun through Sat Hours of Operation: From: 8:00 AM To: 5:00 PM Admission Charge: Not Listed

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