Making studios out of steeples

Future residents of a West Village condo project will have much to think about when they ponder the past occupants of their building.

People who move into the Novare, an eight-unit luxury project on the site of Washington Square United Methodist Church, just off the corner of West Fourth and MacDougal streets, follow a congregation, modern dancers and an acting troupe, all of whom spent time behind the landmarked façde.

They also follow a recent real estate trend. Developers have or are currently converting churches around the city. While the history and character of the buildings provide a unique draw to buyers, converting the buildings from churches to residential spaces presents unique challenges to developers.

Mick Walsdorf and his partner Jon Kully, both of Flank Architecture, bought the Greenwich Village church in 2005 and in September of that year received approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission to convert the church’s interior into eight luxury condo units. The development plan involved maintaining the existing exterior and adding five floors. The condos will be occupied early this year.

“From day one, there were questions of what was allowed,” says Walsdorf. Because the Novare is a historic landmark, Walsdorf and Kully had to follow strict guidelines preserving parts of the building, particularly the façde and the church’s three stained glass windows, which haven’t been repaired since the church was built in 1863. After restoring the stained glass on the front and sides of the building, they had to place a new supporting structure down the center to brace the outer walls. Walsdorf says some of the building’s other attributes as a church helped in that task: the thick, high walls of the original perimeter could handle the additional floors.

To maintain the five-story atrium that was part of the church and to allow Novare residents to see the façde’s stained glass windows from inside the building, Walsdorf and Kully added a glass elevator shaft in the lobby. “Everything is mirrored and symmetrical,” says Walsdorf. “We wanted to preserve the notion that a portion of this building was for public use.”

The building’s two-bedroom and penthouse units also have a “churchy” feel, with each apartment’s doorway opening into a gallery-like area inside. That layout, along with the Novare’s unique history and background, has already attracted buyers. Half of the units, ranging from $2.3 to $6 million, are already sold. Three were bought before construction even started.

Other issues popped up throughout construction, says Walsdorf. Because of the building’s age, the heavy timber beams that were in the church’s attic had warped in every direction. “Over time, all the pieces and parts had moved around,” he says. “But that’s why we were interested in the project.”

Would they consider a church conversion again? “Sure,” says Walsdorf. “If the right thing came along.”

Not all church-to-condo buildings originally looked like traditional churches.

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Gospel Temple Church, at 127th Street in Harlem, had an unassuming linear construction when developer Arthur Fefferman, president of AFC Realty Capital, bought it in 2005 for $4.5 million. The project architect, George Schieferdecker, a partner at BKSK Architects, says he wasn’t able to use the church space in the unit configuration.

But he and Fefferman did restore the detailed brick and stone trim on the church’s façde. “It was a very simple building,” Schieferdecker says. “There was not much of an expression on the outside of what was going on inside.”

Even though Gospel Temple didn’t have stained glass, arches or steeples, Schieferdecker still faced the challenge of adding floors into a space previously wide open for congregation worshipers.

Two years earlier, he converted a four-story townhouse in Stuyvesant Square into East End Temple, a mirror image of his current project’s responsibilities. That project involved restoring the landmark façade and tearing out the back of the home to allow an open worship space. For the Harlem church, he would do the opposite. He and Fefferman converted the worship space by adding three floors within the church interior and building an internal courtyard in the center of the building.

Now named Rhapsody on Fifth Avenue, the building’s 22 studio, one- and two-bedroom units range in price from $500,000 to $1 million. Fefferman says 25 percent of the apartments have been sold. Occupancy is expected in April 2007.

For Fefferman, converting the church to condominiums was a challenge but not too daunting a task — the building’s potential and location were the most important factors in deciding whether or not to develop it. “I was attracted to the building because it was architecturally distinctive and attractive,” says Fefferman. “And Fifth Avenue is Fifth Avenue, no matter where it is in New York.”

Several other New York churches have been converted to residential buildings in the past 20 years, including the Greek Revival Village Presbyterian Church on West 14th Street; Victorian Gothic Convent, across from Stuyvesant Park; and St. Peter’s Church, at the corner of Warren and Hicks streets.

At the Arches at Cobble Hill, a two-year-old development converted from a church, a 3,000 square-foot quadruplex penthouse in the 92-foot bell tower was reportedly on the market last month for $1.6 million

The Church of the Good Shepherd at 248 East 31st Street, converted in the early 1980s, became the Greentree at Murray Hill. Steven Marvisch, a Brown Harris Stevens agent, sold two apartments there for just over $1 million. He estimates that the price for those apartments has gone up between 50 and 65 percent since his first sale there three years ago.

For the Greentree, developers preserved the church façde and added three floors above the rear of the church for a total of nine units. On the sixth floor, Marvisch sold a unit for $1.1 million that was a hybrid of old and new construction. The living room had been part of the church and had 16-foot-high arched ceilings.

“It seemed very ‘old-New York-church,’ ” says Marvisch. “It was quite dramatic.”

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