St Joseph's RC Church, Prince's Dock Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 3AA

St Joseph's is a fine two-storey Roman Catholic church in French Gothic style, built in 1879-80 to designs by Timothy Hevey. Located on the south-west side of Prince's Dock Street in Belfast and set within a terrace of warehouses, the church is accompanied by a rectory house to the rear facing Pilot Street. The building is constructed of squared greywacke stone with dressed red sandstone used for quoins, architraves, courses, and coping. The church closed in February 2001 and remains vacant.

The symmetrical front elevation faces north-east and is organized around a central gable rising into a flying-buttressed tower with stone spire. A tall hoarding obscures much of the ground floor. The main entrance at ground level consists of a large timber double door set within a large semicircular-headed architrave with a semicircular fanlight featuring petal tracery in red sandstone. The architrave appears to have marble three-quarter colonettes to either side. The doorway is set within a shallow gabled porch with stone coping and crow-stepped verge. Plain pilasters rise from either side of the porch to the full height of the gable, forming corner buttresses for the tower, with further outer pilasters rising beyond these to form flying buttresses above gable level. Between each set of buttresses, on either side of the doorway, is a narrow semicircular-headed window topped with a small plain gable, both sitting within a broad shallow buttress-like feature. Above these pilasters are further semicircular-headed windows at an intermediate level, lighting the stairwells. A broad stone string course extends across the porch, with a panelled course of stone immediately above. Decorative floral moulding appears in the spandrel panels between the porch roof and string course. Above this is a pair of tall semicircular-headed windows with marble three-quarter colonettes to their architraves, followed by a large quatrefoil window. The gable line has a bracketed verge and merges with a rectangular two-level tower above.

The lower level of the tower has two flying buttresses to the north-west and south-east faces with pinnacle caps and crockets. These stretch directly to the main corner buttresses of the tower, which are similarly crowned with pinnacles. On the front north-east face at this level is a central niche containing a statue of St Joseph. To the rear north-west are two broad recesses with double semicircular arched heads, with similar single niches to the south-east and south-west faces. The upper level of the tower contains the bell and has two large segmental-headed louvered openings to the front and rear, each with marble three-quarter colonettes to their reveals, with similar single openings to the north-west and south-east sides. At this level the corner buttresses change from square to six-sided form, rising through a bracketed cornice course with gargoyles into eight-sided pinnacles. The tower is capped with a relatively short four-sided stone spire with a small opening to each side, topped with a weathervane.

To the north-west and south-east, only the sides of the higher central part of the gable are exposed, built in red brick with four pairs of semicircular-headed windows with yellow-grey sandstone dressings. The rear south-west gable is also in red brick. A large single-storey gabled chancel extends from the lower half of the main gable, following the shape of the main gable with lower sections to north-west and south-east. Above the chancel, on the main gable, is a large round window whose original rose tracery was replaced with cross tracery in 1959. Above this is a small semicircular-headed window. The chancel gable contains a large semicircular-headed window with stone tracery forming three semicircular-headed lights with a large roundel light above. The lower sections of the chancel gable each have a large multi-foil window. The lower sections of the main gable each have a high-level semicircular-headed window. All roof sections are slated with ventilation fleches to the ridge of the main section and skylights to the lower north-west and south-east sections.

Hevey died shortly before work commenced on site, and construction was overseen by his partner Mortimer H. Thompson. The building cost around £12,000 and opened for services before work was fully completed, with the spire added some months later. The church was built in response to growth in the Catholic population within the docks area and to serve as a place of worship for visiting sailors. It replaced a large shed used by the local congregation since 1872, which had previously served as a chapel of ease for St Patrick's Church in Donegall Street. By the late 1870s, the congregation had outgrown the shed, prompting the creation of the new parish of St Joseph and construction of the new church. During construction, services were held in a former flax spinning mill in Rowan Street.

Significant alterations were made in the mid-twentieth century. The stained glass was replaced in 1959. The original high altar, designed by James Pearce of Dublin (father of 1916 Rising leader P. H. Pearse), was removed and the entire interior refurbished in 1961-62 under the supervision of architects McLean & Forte. The shift of population away from the docks area in the latter half of the twentieth century led to a gradual decline in the number of worshippers, culminating in the church's closure in February 2001.