St. Joseph's Episcopal Church

This English Gothic church was the successor to the earlier St. Joseph's Memorial Chapel, located at Woodward Avenue and Medbury Streets. The architect, James J. Nettleton, a graduate of Cornell University's school of architecture and former draftsman with the Detroit firm of Donaldson and Meier, was a member of St. Joseph's congregation. In 1971, St. Matthew's, Detroit's oldest Black Episcopal congregation, merged with St. Joseph's Episcopal after the sale of their building to another congregation. The 1926-27 St. Joseph's Church is a well-preserved locally significant example of the Neo-Gothic movement in church architecture.

The structure, measuring 125 feet in length and 96 feet in width, is located on the northeast corner of Woodward Avenue and Holbrook in Detroit. The church is a dark coursed sandstone, English Gothic-style church with gray limestone trim built in 1926-27. It is typically Gothic in plan with a tall, narrow, gabled nave with lower side aisles extending back to projecting, gabled transepts. The north transept is abutted by a tall, square, flat-roofed tower with a louvered belfry, which serves as the transitional element between the church and the 1½-story, Gothic, parish house wing which stretches along the rear of the lot to Holbrook Street, making the complex L-shaped. The buttressed facade consists of the usual recessed entrance portal surmounted by a rose window. The buttressed side elevations contain four bays of Gothic clerestory windows extending back to the gabled transepts with their attenuated tripartite Gothic windows. The church interior is early English Gothic in feeling with a wooden, beamed ceiling and massive masonry piers. It is dimly lit by richly colored, stained-glass windows. The sanctuary is furnished with elaborately carved oak panelling and furniture in the Gothic style.

This Richardsonian Romanesque complex originated with the St. Joseph's Memorial Chapel, the gift of Mrs. L. R. Medbury. The smaller chapel, consecrated on July 9, 1884, proved too small for the growing congregation and the present larger church was erected west of the chapel facing toward Woodward Avenue. In 1906 St. Joseph's congregation merged with that of the congregation of St. Paul's Cathedral nearby. The building was sold in 1907 to Father Francis J. Vanantwerp for a purchase price of $19,500. The present congregation draws an urban mix of Wayne State University students, street people, and Catholic charismatics. The church interior has been significantly altered to reflect service to its contemporary parishioners. The former St. Joseph's Church complex is notable in a statewide context as a fine example of Richardsonian Romanesque church design and the 1893-96 church itself in at least a local context as an important work of the prominent Detroit architectural firm of Malcomson & Higginbotham.

The complex is located on the northeast corner of Woodward Avenue and Medbury Street (now the Edsel Ford service drive). St. Joseph's Episcopal Church (now Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church), built 1893-96, is a rambling, ground-hugging, rock-faced, cross-gable-roofed, sandstone, Romanesque Revival structure notable for its complex massing. The Woodward Avenue elevation is the entrance front. The gabled facade is flanked by a tall, square, pyramid-roofed tower at the corner of Medbury Street and by a lower, round, conical-roofed tower on the north. A one-story vestibule containing the arched entrance spans the facade between the towers. A huge round window fills the gable above the vestibule. The most notable feature of the facade is the soaring corner tower with its corbelled and battlemented parapet. The rectangular severity of the tower shaft is modulated by a two-story, semi-circular stair turret on the Woodward Avenue side and a round turret that projects from its outside corner at the upper levels. The oversized, gilded statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary crowning the tower's hip-roof is a striking feature and an addition. The Medbury Street side is the only other architecturally articulated elevation of the building. It is dominated by the massive gable of the transept which is pierced by a large, tri-partite, arched window. Arched double doors in the base of the tower provide a secondary entrance to the church. Extending to the rear of the church is the flat-roofed wing containing the sacristy and service rooms. Terminating the building is the chapel, a gable-roof, stone, Richardsonian Romanesque structure with a square, pyramid-roof, corner tower. The chapel was built in 1883-84 and served as the original St. Joseph's. The interior of the church was extensively re-decorated in the early 1970s to reflect contemporary taste. It retains its basic Romanesque plan and decorative features but has been painted a light cream (except for the stone columns) and furnished in a modern manner with a new altar and modern chairs rather than pews.