The eclectic architecture is a mix of BaroqueRomanesque styles, an experiment not uncommon in the Victorian era. When originally built, the church had a 250-foot (76.2 m) Baroque tower, but in the 1913 renovation supervised by architect Paul Schulz, the tower was simplified and shortened.[2] The AIA Guide to New York City calls the church "a powerful, deeply modeled, limestone pile, one of the tallest structures (except the "projects") in the community" and dates the church to the 1870s.[4]
The church was once the most important in Manhattan's "Little Germany" and was often referred to as the "German Catholic Cathedral" of New York by the German Catholic community. This parish grew out of the first German Catholic parish in New York City, St. Nicholas' Church, which has since been closed and demolished.[5] The grandiosity of this church is synonymous with the importance of the German Catholic community in the middle of the nineteenth century in New York City. At that time, German Catholics were the second largest Catholic group in the city after the Irish Catholic community. Most Holy Redeemer originally had a primary school run by the School Sisters of Notre Dame which taught its students entirely in the German language for most of the nineteenth century.[6] More than a dozen children died in a fire at the school in 1883.[7]
In 2014, the Church of the Nativity on Second Avenue between Second and 3rd Streets was merged into Holy Redeemer. The new parish is now known as Most Holy Redeemer/Nativity Parish.[8]
In 2018, the Redemptorist Order withdrew from the parish and the parish is now ministered by priests of the archdiocese.[citation needed]
The church is a pilgrimage shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Today, many of the church's parishioners refer to it as Santísimo Redentor.[2]
^White, Norval; Willensky, Elliot; Leadon, Fran (2010). AIA Guide to New York City. American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (Fifth ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 202. ISBN978-0-19-538386-7.
