St. Matthias Roman Catholic Church

58-19 Catalpa Avenue | Ridgewood | built 1925

Open on the map4 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1919

    Father Nicholas Wagner finishes a basement church meant to carry a bigger St. Matthias

    A 1917 campaign for a larger church stalled when wartime shortages drove up the cost of labor and materials. Father Nicholas M. Wagner, the parish's founding pastor, planned a temporary church that could later serve as the base for the permanent one. That plain one-story brick 'basement' church, set between the convent and the rectory, was completed in 1919.

    “Father Wagner took the farsighted step of planning for a temporary church structure that would ultimately serve as the foundation for a new church…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1924

    October 5

    St. Matthias parish lays the cornerstone of its new church on Catalpa Avenue

    Bishop Charles Edward McDonnell created the parish on May 2, 1908, and named the Rev. Nicholas M. Wagner its first pastor. That September Wagner arranged to buy 20 lots on Elm Avenue, now Catalpa Avenue, where the parish's first church, now used by its school, went up. The cornerstone of the present church was laid on October 5, 1924.

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1926

    Working-class families pay for the new St. Matthias Church, dedicated in 1926

    The new church was projected to cost $250,000, and by 1924 the parish had raised enough to start building, mostly through gifts of $200 or less from its working-class families. Henry Schlachter, who had built the rectory, was the contractor. The church was dedicated in 1926, kept to a modest scale and pale-yellow brick so that it fit with the parish's older buildings.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1926

    Francis J. Berlenbach Jr. gives St. Matthias a bell tower and Italian Renaissance front

    Francis J. Berlenbach Jr. designed the neo-Renaissance church for the parish, facing it in buff ironspot brick with stone, terra-cotta or cast-stone trim. Its front has paired Corinthian columns, Guastavino tile vaulting under the entry entablature, a frieze reading 'OVR TESTIMONY THAT THE LORD IS GOD', and a cornerstone marked 'A.D. 1924'. A three-stage tower rises above the projecting center bay.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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