For a couple who had spent four years looking at real estate, a church put up for sale by the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago seemed like an answered prayer.
“We were searching for the right rehab project and didn’t want to move into another traditional space,” says the wife.
They were leaving behind a suburban home in which they had lived for 14 years. The urban structure was built in 1895 as the auxiliary chapel of a prominent Logan Square parish. Yet with its pitched roof, simple wood frame exterior and smattering of small stained- glass windows, it looked more like an ordinary Victorian residence than a place of worship.
It was anything but ordinary inside, however.
The steep roof concealed a ceiling made stunning by rich, dark wood paneling and a soaring network of trusses. Broad expanses of the same richly hued wood-actually commonplace fir stained to resemble patrician mahogany-formed the structure’s wainscoting and window casements, lending an air of Gothic grandeur.
The paint job was also impressive, with an ornate religious mural on the coved ceiling of the chancel, flanked by pediment arches painted to mimic marble “It was faux before faux was even in,” observes the wife.
With such glorious attributes, it is easy to see why the couple “wanted to keep the old ‘old’ and the new ‘new,’ ” as the wife explains. “We had a very distinct program retaining the characteristics that made the building special, not interfering with its architecture and recycling whatever we could.”
On their agenda was the addition of a kitchen, an enclosed bedroom and washroom and a balcony to house an office and study, which were all to be extremely contemporary in design. They planned on carving these spaces out of the back of the church, leaving the altar and the expanse around it to become a dining and living area.
They hired the architecture firm Mastro & Skylar, “because they were the only firm that really understood what we wanted,” says the wife. Five years later, with their unconventional plans now implemented, a symbiosis of the architects and clients is evident in the seamless melding of old and new.
The Gothic-revival pediment that originally crowned the altar is now installed as a piece of sculpture in the foyer, and just beyond it, a post-modern stairway with wavy steel balusters bisects the back of the chapel. It leads up to a lofty T-shaped balcony built over an enclosed bedroom on the main floor.
Snaking out into the chapel, and rimmed with a rough-hewn stainless steel railing, this balcony captures the spirit of the project, for it contrasts sharply with the finely wrought vintage elements of the place. But it also creates a highly functional island of new and cleverly reclaimed ground in a sea of unused space.
A high-tech, high-style kitchen is nestled under part of the balcony, with the “pretty” parts (such as a granite-topped stainless steel island) flanking the living room and the unseemly guts (namely the sinks and prep areas) secluded in a former storeroom at one end of the space. That way “dirty dishes and anything messy ends up out of sight during dinner parties,” the wife points out.
But it is the chancel, transformed into a breathtaking living room, that occupies center stage in this home. With the mural left intact and the walls of this great room painted in a complementary decorative finish (“we weren’t trying to make them look like anything,” says the wife. “We just wanted to enhance the mural”),
the soaring expanse pays true homage to the origin of the term “cathedral ceiling.”
Furnishing the home is a continuing process, admits the wife, who is working with interior designer Michael O’Malley and considers the space in a state of flux. But right now, recycling the architectural components the couple has salvaged for the space is their priority. So far, pipes from the original organ grace a breakfront, a vestment cabinet houses linens, the altar rails have been transformed into a majestic headboard in the bedroom and a shortened pew is doing double duty as dining room seating.
“We originally thought this would be a hard-edged, industrial space,” says the husband, “but this 100-year-old structure has inspired us to create an entirely different environment.” Some would call it divine intervention. n
See Resources, pg. 66. or a couple who had spent four years looking at real estate, a church put up for sale by the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago seemed like an answered prayer.
“We were searching for the right rehab project and didn’t want to move into another traditional space,” says the wife.
They were leaving behind a suburban home in which they had lived for 14 years. The urban structure was built in 1895 as the auxiliary chapel of a prominent Logan Square parish. Yet with its pitched roof, simple wood frame exterior and smattering of small stained- glass windows, it looked more like an ordinary Victorian residence than a place of worship.
It was anything but ordinary inside, however.
The steep roof concealed a ceiling made stunning by rich, dark wood paneling and a soaring network of trusses. Broad expanses of the same richly hued wood-actually commonplace fir stained to resemble patrician mahogany-formed the structure’s wainscoting and window casements, lending an air of Gothic grandeur.
The paint job was also impressive, with an ornate religious mural on the coved ceiling of the chancel, flanked by pediment arches painted to mimic marble “It was faux before faux was even in,” observes the wife.
With such glorious attributes, it is easy to see why the couple “wanted to keep the old ‘old’ and the new ‘new,’ ” as the wife explains. “We had a very distinct program retaining the characteristics that made the building special, not interfering with its architecture and recycling whatever we could.”
On their agenda was the addition of a kitchen, an enclosed bedroom and washroom and a balcony to house an office and study, which were all to be extremely contemporary in design. They planned on carving these spaces out of the back of the church, leaving the altar and the expanse around it to become a dining and living area.
They hired the architecture firm Mastro & Skylar, “because they were the only firm that really understood what we wanted,” says the wife. Five years later, with their unconventional plans now implemented, a symbiosis of the architects and clients is evident in the seamless melding of old and new.
The Gothic-revival pediment that originally crowned the altar is now installed as a piece of sculpture in the foyer, and just beyond it, a post-modern stairway with wavy steel balusters bisects the back of the chapel. It leads up to a lofty T-shaped balcony built over an enclosed bedroom on the main floor.
Snaking out into the chapel, and rimmed with a rough-hewn stainless steel railing, this balcony captures the spirit of the project, for it contrasts sharply with the finely wrought vintage elements of the place. But it also creates a highly functional island of new and cleverly reclaimed ground in a sea of unused space.
A high-tech, high-style kitchen is nestled under part of the balcony, with the “pretty” parts (such as a granite-topped stainless steel island) flanking the living room and the unseemly guts (namely the sinks and prep areas) secluded in a former storeroom at one end of the space. That way “dirty dishes and anything messy ends up out of sight during dinner parties,” the wife points out.
But it is the chancel, transformed into a breathtaking living room, that occupies center stage in this home. With the mural left intact and the walls of this great room painted in a complementary decorative finish (“we weren’t trying to make them look like anything,” says the wife. “We just wanted to enhance the mural”),
the soaring expanse pays true homage to the origin of the term “cathedral ceiling.”
Furnishing the home is a continuing process, admits the wife, who is working with interior designer Michael O’Malley and considers the space in a state of flux. But right now, recycling the architectural components the couple has salvaged for the space is their priority. So far, pipes from the original organ grace a breakfront, a vestment cabinet houses linens, the altar rails have been transformed into a majestic headboard in the bedroom and a shortened pew is doing double duty as dining room seating.
“We originally thought this would be a hard-edged, industrial space,” says the husband, “but this 100-year-old structure has inspired us to create an entirely different environment.” Some would call it divine intervention.
