St. Matthias School

58-25 Catalpa Avenue | also 58-19 Catalpa Avenue | Ridgewood | built 1925

Open on the map3 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. 1909

    The new St. Matthias parish puts up a combined church and school in a single year

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    Early in 1909 the new parish began raising money for its first building, which went up that same year in what accounts called record time. Francis J. Berlenbach, Jr. designed it in a Romanesque and Renaissance Revival style, faced in the Kreischer brick of the surrounding tenements and trimmed in stone and terra cotta. A 600-seat chapel filled the main floor, with six parochial-school classrooms upstairs.

    “A chapel seating 600 occupied the main floor, with six classrooms for a parochial school on the floor above.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1913

    A rear addition lets the St. Matthias church-school seat 900 worshippers

    In 1913 an addition was built onto the back of the combined church and school, designed by its original architect, Francis J. Berlenbach, Jr. It raised the chapel's capacity from 600 seats to 900. The parish kept growing through the 1910s, and in 1917 it began a campaign for a separate, larger church.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1950

    Beatty and Berlenbach add a cinderblock-and-brick wing to the rear of St. Matthias School

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    In 1950 the school gained a second rear addition, designed by George Edward Beatty with Francis J. Berlenbach, Jr., the original architect. Built of cinderblock and brick with a curtain wall, it is reached by an alley on the west side of the school. It joined the 1913 brick extension, also by Berlenbach; at the front, a statue of St. Matthias stands between the entry doors above a cornerstone marked A.D. 1909.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 1,266 buildings with stories in Ridgewood