Most Holy Redeemer Parish began in 1844. The present church was completed and consecrated in 1852. This first installment is about the beginnings.
By 1844 the City of New York had done a lot of maturing since the day, 55 years earlier, when George Washington took the oath of office as our first President, at Federal Hall at Wall Street. The city was still just Manhattan, and most of its commercial activity was between the Battery and 14th Street; but the city was thriving and growing as a metropolis.
Thousands of Irish and German immigrants had poured into what is today lower Manhattan. In 1844 the only church for the German Catholics was St. Nicholas on 2nd Street between Avenues A and B.
Its priest was Father Raffeiner. When he moved across the river to Williamsburg to build a new church there, three Redemptorists -- Fr. Gabriel Rumpler and two Brothers – were asked to move in and staff St. Nicholas.
Father Rumpler no sooner became pastor than he knew St. Nicholas would not be enough to take care of all the German Catholics in the area. New York’s Bishop John Hughes agreed to create a new parish. In January, 1844 Fr. Rumpler purchased twelve lots on East Third and Fourth Streets between Avenues A and B for $32,000.
The Redemptorists and members of the new parish built the first church in just three months, at a cost of $6,000. On Monday, April 8, 1844 the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer was dedicated. That same day a child was baptized in the church.
Once services began in the new church, plans began for the larger, permanent church to be built. On April 21, 1851 the cornerstone of the second church was laid. On Nov. 28, 1852 Most Holy Redeemer Church was consecrated. John Neumann, Bishop of Philadelphia and himself a Redemptorist, celebrated the Mass of Consecration of the church. We now know him as St. John Neumann.
The church actually opened its doors in the spring of 1853. When it opened it was already free of debt. It was called “the German cathedral” but it was a church built by poor German immigrants which would remain a church for all immigrants of the Lower East Side.