St. Nicholas Kirche (New York City)  St. Nicholas Kirche is a former Roman Catholic church located at 127 East Second Street between Avenue A and First Avenue in the Alphabet City/East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The church, known in German as Deutsche Römisch-Katholische St. Nicholas Kirche ("St. Nicholas Roman Catholic German Church"), was the national parish for the local German-speaking population. The parish was founded in 1833 by the Austrian priest Father Johann Stephen Raffeiner (1785–1861) as the first and thus oldest German-language Catholic parish in New York City. Father Raffeiner was actively engaged in establishing the parish. Back then a large German-speaking colony was located east of the Bowery, necessitating the establishment of religious services in German. Raffeiner first temporarily rented a carpenter shop on Delancey Street for services. He later leased a former meeting house of the Anabaptists located at Delancey and Pitt Streets, making a formal beginning for the first congregation of German-speaking Catholics. As the number of parishioners increased, the issue of finding a permanent structure for the church became more pressing. For this purpose, four lots of ground, with a frontage of one hundred feet and a depth of one hundred and six, on Second street, between Avenue A and First Avenue, were purchased through Dr. Joseph C. Springer, from John Jacob Astor, on September 1, 1834. The cornerstone of this new church, which was dedicated to Saint Nicholas of Myra, was laid, on Easter Monday, April 20, 1835, by the Very Rev. Dr. John Power, V.G., the English sermon being preached to the large concourse assembled by the Rev. Joseph A. Schneller, then of Christ Church, Ann Street, and a discourse in German by Father Raffeiner. The building was fifty-two by seventy feet and its cost for work and materials $8,174; for fittings $1,384 and for the organ $600. Before it was entirely finished the lease of the hired Baptist meeting house in Delancey Street expired, and the new congregation were for a time accommodated by Father Quarter in the basement of St. Mary's, Grand Street. The dedication ceremony took place on Easter Sunday, 1836. The parish was later incorporated under the old New York law with a board of lay trustees elected by the pew-holders.