Saint Joseph's Catholic Church

This nomination amends the December 8, 1972 listing of St. Joseph's Church by nominating as a district the parish complex consisting of the church and four subsidiary buildings centered at the corner of Jay and Orleans Streets. The contributing buildings in the complex are the church and rectory, both located on Jay Street between Orleans Street and the Grand Trunk railroad; the convent (first built as a rectory), located on the northwest corner of Jay and Orleans; and the 'Wermers house', now used as a sacristans' residence, located on Antietam Street immediately east of the chancel of the church. There is also a non-contributing concrete block garage located behind the rectory.

Clearly, the church is the centerpiece of the complex. The decision to build it was made in the late 1860's when it became obvious that the parish's first church would not long be adequate, even with its added galleries. Plans were commissioned from Francis G. Himpler of Hoboken and New York, and the cornerstone was laid October 23, 1870.

Construction took over three years; the structure was generally complete by the end of 1872, and the interior work took most of 1873. The church was dedicated on November 16, 1873.

The significance of St. Joseph's Church as a historic place springs from two sources - one that is fairly obvious and a second that is less so. Its fairly obvious significance is as a fine example of nineteenth century Gothic Revival church architecture. Its less obvious significance lies in the history of its congregation, particularly in its history between 1856, when the Parish was founded, and the outbreak of the First World War.

The Parish was organized and passed much of its life as one of Detroit's leading German-American immigrant institutions. The church built by this somewhat typical, yet fascinating, Parish stands today as a monument to the immigrants from Germany (and, in a larger sense, to the immigrants from all lands) who, in the second half of the nineteenth century, populated Detroit and the heartland of America and made it into the industrial giant that it later became.

The church is a large Gothic Revival structure, much in the style of the German hall-church. The material is local rough-faced limestone, with cut stone decorative work. The facade is dominated by the large tower and spire, nearly three hundred feet tall; the tower is square to just above the roof line of the nave, where a transition to an octagonal plan is carried out in typical Gothic fashion with pinnacles at the four corners. The tower carries a steeple covered with slate with contrasting decorative work in copper.

The flanking portions of the facade are finished off at the top with a filled in flying-buttress, an interesting adaptation of Gothic forms. The five bays of the nave have tall windows opening into the aisles, with attached buttresses between the windows. The aisles have less steep roofs than the nave, no doubt in order to give external emphasis to the short transepts. These transepts are evident enough on the exterior, thereby giving the church the favored cruciform plan; on the interior, Himpler has succeeded in suppressing the transepts as such, so that the sweep of the hall-church remains uninterrupted.

On the roof at the crossing is a copper-covered fleche. Behind the transepts, the exterior shows what appears to be another bay identical to those of the nave. In fact, the space inside is occupied by sacristies from the line of the nave arcade to the outer wall, and an apse with five very tall, narrow windows.