The church is located at the corner of St. Mary's and Washburn Streets in the town of Riverside, Iowa, United States.

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.

As the number of German and Irish Catholics increased in Riverside it was decided to build a church in town.

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.

Drexler was pastor, a combination school building and convent was constructed between 1888 and 1889 west of the church.

[5] The Franciscan Sisters of Christ the Divine Teacher from Davenport began teaching in the school in the 1980s.

The parish has subsequently sold the school building and the convent has been torn down and replaced by a parking lot.

The current church building (1907) is built of red brick in the Gothic Revival style.

Below the bell chamber surrounded by a round arch is a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The building contains period stained glass windows, its original wooden altars and a pipe organ.

Two murals that were painted in oil over the side altars and the Twelve Apostles on the intradoses of the nave arches were completed in 1937.

They are divided by flat brick pilasters, and each bay has a tall lancet window in the center.

A renovation in the early 21st century opened up the main entrance and the lancet windows, which were filled with tinted glass.

A modern addition was added to the west side of the building to house religious education classes.

It features square brick piers, simple wooden spindle balustrade, and a shallow triangular pediment above the front steps.

The nearly square-plan building is capped with a low hipped roof and projecting rafter ends beneath the eaves.

The former convent (1889), no longer extant, was a two-story structure that was built of locally produced orange brick.