Jan Doedes van der Weide is a
relatively unknown architect, but he is known to have worked for P.J.H.
Cuypers for some time. The influence of his former employer is very
present in this church, which is probably his only one. Despite
the fact that Sint Nicolaasga
wasn't a rich village, it did have a vast catholic majority that was
waiting to replace the simple and
small neo-Classical church of 1833 by something bigger and prouder. The
architect was commissioned to design a big
and richly decorated church. It's
a three-aisled cruciform basilica with a 61-meter tall tower. The
entire building is in neo-Gothic style and shows similarities with
several of Cuypers' churches, especially the St. Bonifatius in
Leeuwarden, which was built with Van der Weide as the overseer. Some of
the main similarities are the front of the lower part of the tower and
the configuration of the transept walls.
