The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825
made it possible for residents of the eastern United States and European
immigrants to migrate to
Detroit. Many of
the early European immigrants were Irish or German Catholics. The city’s
first major parish, St. Anne du Detroit, retained
its French heritage for decades,
but
by the late 1830s, the need for a German Catholic parish was evident. The Beaubien
family donated land for a German parish at the intersection of Monroe and Beaubien
Streets. That land that has been occupied by St. Mary’s parish since 1841.
The growth of the German population continued in the 1840s and 1850s. Harmonie
Park on the east side of Woodward and the area now located in the Mies
van de
Rohr Historic District were residential centers for the German immigrants.
In
1856, the city’s second German parish, St. Joseph’s was founded with
Father Edward Franz von Kampanhaurt—who had served at St. Mary’s—as
the first pastor. A wooden church was erected along Gratiot in 1856. Thus St. Joseph's Parish is an offshoot of St. Mary's Parish.
The growth of the German Catholic population and their prosperity in increasingly
industrial Detroit, permitted St. Joseph’s parish to build a church that
remains to this day, one of the city’s most impressive. The congregation
chose New York architect Francis Himpler to design a Victorian Gothic Revival
church of very large size—200 feet long and 80 feet wide. It was the
city’s largest church when built. Rock-faced ashler limestone from Trenton
Michigan was used as the basic building materials. The cut stone trim 
is Ohio
limestone. Over the decades, this trim stone has darkened to black, giving the
church an appealing gray and black pattern. The spires that reach 300 feet into
Detroit’s skyline were not fully completed until 1911. A number of the
city’s churches that were built in the 1860s used local limestone but the
supply ran out. St. Joseph’s was the final church in the city constructed
with local stone. As Hawkins Ferry observed, Himpler designed the church with
tall windows, a steep roof, three interior naves of roughly equal height and
a tall tower at the front reminding parishioners of the Hallenkirken of southern
Germany.
Several dozen Detroit churches and synagogues merit inclusion in the National
Register of Historic Places. This is the only one that the Department of Interior’s
Registry designates as of national importance. This is attributable, in part,
to the interior of the church and the significance of windows, statuary and the
organ. By the time this church was constructed, statues, altars, confessionals
and pulpits were frequently constructed of molded or cast plaster to save costs.
All of the interior decorations at St. Joseph are in hand-carved wood, many of
them imported from Germany, although some were carved in Detroit. The original
organ was built in the 1870s in New York by the Odell firm. It has been renovated
over the years using some or many of the original pipes. The Detroit firm of
Frederichs and Staffin imported German goods, including some of the magnificent
stained glass windows for this church. Mr. Frederichs was a member of the parish
and donated the rose window. Indeed, his firm worked in glass, so he may have
helped design or build components of the stained glass windows. The bells for
the tower were cast in Baltimore. When the largest one—weighing 5,000
pounds—was cast it was reported to be the largest swinging bell in the
nation. It is interesting to speculate about the hoist arrangements that were
used to lift such a large bell to its tower.
The pastor responsible for building this church, Johann Friedland, was born in
Prussia in 1833, but studied for the priesthood at a seminary in Louvain that
specialized in training priests for employment in the United States. He arrived
in New York in 1862; one year later, he was pastor of St. Joseph’s and,
just nine years after that, the church you see was substantially complete.
The architect, was born in 1833 in Trier, Germany as Franz Georg Himpler. He
spent four years in the 1850s studying at the Royal Academy in Berlin. He came
to the United States just after the Civil War and specialized in designing large
churches for the German community. He designed a dozen or so churches that now
stand in a variety of cities in the eastern United States, but he also had the
privilege of designing a city hall and a firehouse in his adopted home town of
Hoboken, New Jersey. Himpler, I believe, anglicanized his first name from Franz
Georg
to Francis. He is buried in the very impressive city hall that he designed for Hoboken.
The St. Joseph Roman Catholic Parish Historic District includes three buildings
in addition to the church: a rectory of rock-faced coursed ashlar sandstone in
the Gothic Revival style, a sacristan building known as the Wermer House in the
prairie style and a brick convent of Italianate design. In the past, this parish
supported separate elementary schools for boys and girls as well as a high school.
The parish is an active one and linked to its roots. A Mass is said in Latin
every Sunday and, once a month, a Mass is offered in German for the German-speaking
Catholic community of southeast Michigan.
Additional information about this church and some marvelous pictures of the richly decorated interior may be found in the impressive 2012 book about Detroit's hjouses of worship cited below.
Architect: Francis G. Himpler
Architectural Style: German Gothic
Date of Construction of Church: 1873
Date of addition of the octagonal bell tower: 1883
Date of addition of spire: 1893 (Donaldson and Meier)
Stained glass: Some imported from Meyer of Munich and some imported and/or produced
by the Detroit
firm of Fredericks and Staffins
Website: http://www.saint-joseph-detroit.org/ This website is especially informative
and includes an extensive history of the church and of several key figures in
the parish.
For additional information see: Marla O. Collum, Barbara E. Krueger and Dorothy Kostuch, Detroit's Historic Places of Worship (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012)
Use in 2013: Roman Catholic Church
City of Detroit Local Historic District: Not Listed
State of Michigan Registry of Historic Buildings: Listed June 12, 1972
State of Michigan Historical Marker: Erected December 26, 1985. This is visible
in the front of the church.
National Register of Historic Sites: Listed January 28, 1992
Photo: Andrew Chandler; December, 2004
Description updated: January, 2013
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