This is the second oldest Church Building in RI

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History of the Church

Born in Kilkenny, Ireland, Keeley was the son of an architect; he worked with his father and probably had some opportunities to travel and observe old buildings. At the age of twenty-five he came to this country, settling eventually in Brooklyn, New York, and thereafter carrying on a quite successful independent practice of architecture, almost entirely devoted to church work, in the northern East Coast and in nearby Canada. St. Joseph's Church dates fairly early in his long career, which later included the Roman Catholic cathedrals in Boston, Massachusetts, Portland, Maine, and (in 1893) Providence.

The financially-dictated austerity of his initial, simple yet handsome, design has over many years been lessened by the ornaments given by members of the parish or added by successive rectors, among whom Monsignor Peter E. Blessing--incumbent from 1916 to 1936--can be given special credit for taste and discretion. All of these additions to the fabric are part of the history of the building and its parish as well as the single most distinguished extant monument in Providence embodying Catholic tastes in architecture and the liturgical arts from the middle of the 19^th Century to the middle of the succeeding one.

The first Roman Catholic mass in Providence was celebrated in 1789 by the French Abbe de la Poterie, and after that the local congregations for years met in private houses or small hired halls. By the 1830's, however, Catholics became more numerous here, many being Irish construction workers on the Providence-Worcester Railroad who stayed on at this end of their work and settled in Fox Point, as the area where St. Joseph's Church stands is called. By 1851 this section had been declared St. Joseph's Parish, and thoughts were given towards providing it with a permanent and substantial home church. Bishop O'Reilly, of the Hartford Diocese which then included Providence, agreed, and Keeley was engaged as architect. He produced what is now the second oldest standing Roman Catholic church structure in Rhode Island, its predecessors having been hired halls, temporary structures or hand-me-down buildings minimally altered for their new purpose. While the parish was ambitious, it was also materially poor, and much of the preliminary work of clearing the church-site, breaking and hauling stone etc. was done by its own men after their ordinary day's work. Its cornerstone blessed in August, 1851, the church was completed and open for services in December of 1853, and it was formally dedicated in July, 1855.

As years passed, the section in which the church is located became an even stronger and much more prosperous Irish Catholic enclave. More parish projects (a school, a convent, a sympathetically-designed rectory and sacristy in the 1880's) were undertaken, and the interior of the church itself, as mentioned, received more attention. These efforts we see today, and rectors and parishioners have had reason to be proud of past achievements and to cherish their church building.

The church continues to hold services today. Visit the church website for more information.

Building Description

The building is basically a long, high, gable-roofed rectangle with a tall, square tower (without spire) protruded from center front and with an altar sanctuary flanked by low vestries pushed out at the rear; there are no transepts. Exterior facing is of tawny native stone laid in random ashlar, roughly-dressed, and trim is of smoothly dressed dark brown sandstone. At all exterior angles and along the side elevations are stepped buttresses on pedestals, their sloped steps covered and trimmed by sandstone. The long roof is covered by slate. The interior, behind a vestibule or narthex, is laid out in simple basilica form, and this dictates the three entrances across the entrance (east) front; the central portal pierces the base of the tower and is recessed beneath a series of rounded moldings in its pointed archway: those in the flanking bays of this facade are smaller but similar. Pointed and traceried windows are used above the portals and between them, there being an especially large one halfway up the front of the tower; above this big window is a small quatrefoil one and then paired, pointed, louvred openings at the belfry stage. The tower's top is finished with tall pinnacles having cone-like terminations at its corners; between these runs crenellation interrupted by smaller pinnacles. The sides of this church are plain, simply showing the progression of six bays between buttresses, the five western of these bays being occupied by tall, traceried, stained-glass windows. A large window of stained glass is a major interior adornment of the chancel or sanctuary and is the chief external adornment of the church's generally-unseen rear.

The interior remains very much as Keeley originally planned it, though it now displays more surface embellishment than it had in the 1850's. (As the parish was at first by no means a rich one, simply erecting a church building of this size must have been a formidable undertaking, without allowing for applied interior elegancies; at the beginning the church must have been as severe inside as it remains outside.) Entrance to the church is through a one-story vestibule, above which is the organ-and choir-loft, across the east end, and here are enclosed corner stairs to the balconies of the church proper and three doors opening to its aisles. This auditorium, which is sizeable, high and open, is of basilica plan, six bays in length, and it is covered by a gable roof without clerestory or other upper openings which is partially supported by rows of piers, on either side of the central seating space, which are encased in plaster and painted stone-color to give the effect of clustered columns. The east-west spaces between these piers or columns are handled as pointed arches, finished with a number of rounded plaster moldings and not reaching fully up to the roof but with plastered spaces above them. Bracketed-out on consoles above each column-capital are transverse timber trusses which appear to aid in support of the roof and which intentionally give a vaulted or pointed-arch appearance to the long, main nave area. Similar trussing is employed along the lower, side areas. Down the north and south sides of the auditorium run galleries having flat frontals with applied wooden, Gothic, cusped arcading. Woodwork, including pews with paneled ends curved and carved at the top and with curving arm-rests, is of darkened oak. Plaster walls are of buff color and probably always have been: they are adorned with stenciled borders in red, gold and green, and a similar stencil treatment is used on the ceiling of the auditorium, between trusses, giving it a paneled effect. At the west end the rectangular chancel area, much of which shows later embellishment, actually does have a pointed-arch ceiling vault, this of plaster with applied wooden ribbing.

Features giving interest to the church interior (and some now, like the stenciling in the church proper and the mural paintings of angels high in the chancel, in need of restoration) are the various ornamentations and accessories given the building by parishioners over a one-hundred-year period. Around 1890 it was decided to install two side-altars flanking the sanctuary, and the provision of space for these caused removal of sections of gallery in the sixth or westernmost bays of the church. At about the same time, a chime of bells for the tower was received as a gift. Later, in 1900, the large window behind the altar was provided with stained glass from the Mazer studio in Munich, again the gift of a parishioner, and this attracted further gifts from the parish, eventually filling all the side windows with fine stained glass, too. Another gift, in 1905, was a redesigned sanctuary and a new altar and reredos in white marble with colored inserts, designed by the eminent firm of Heins & Lafarge. In the 1910-1920 period the incumbent rector, Monsignor Blessing, undertook with taste further improvements: marble wainscoting of simple recessed panels was installed; new exterior doors were hung; the vestibule and organ-loft areas were given fumed-oak paneling; pews were refinished; the organ-loft was opened up so that a new stained-glass memorial window in the eastern tower could be seen from within. Also in this era there was added an altar rail of marble and travertine stone, of pierced, foliate carving, beautifully executed; subsequently the altar area was floored in travertine and wainscoted in marble and travertine. Bronze hanging lanterns, a marble pulpit and mosaics on the reredos are installations by a rector of the 1940's-1950's.

Photographs of St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church