The street is named after the vicinity to the German Church, and the German parish.
From contemporary accounts it is known the first was bought and used by the Finnish and German parishes in 1593.
Father Toebbe served most of his priestly career at a German parish in Cincinnati.
The parish eventually merged with the German parish in 1980, after declining membership.
It was read from the pulpits of German Catholic parishes on Palm Sunday 1937.
Between 1841 and 1870, ten German Catholic parishes were established in the Holyland.
The lot was thereafter bought by the German parish who had a first school building built in 1626, and a new completed in 1670.
Once a largely German parish, the church later merged with nearby Italian and Polish congregations.
An alert pastor of a different German parish learned of their plight and immediately brought the nuns to his new school in Williamsburg.
The Archdiocese listed the church as a German parish until 1959.