A new Catholic church, designed by K.P. Tholens and devoted to “Our Lady of Perpetual Help”, was constructed as an integral part of De Baarsjes, a new neighbourhood in West Amsterdam. The Chassé Church, as it was popularly known, was a big church and part of a Catholic enclave that also included a vicarage, schools and a nunnery. Kees Fens, a well-known literary critic and author who grew up next to the church in the 1930s, has noted that the neighbourhood was characterized by an “intense churchly engagement” and by the “unavoidability” of faith.