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 (now a parish hall), and former school building. The former convent, which was included in the historical designation, is no longer in existence. History 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.