Matthew Bremer wasn’t exactly looking to buy a place in the Catskills, especially one that was an abandoned rural church (with no septic system) in the woods near a sleepy town he’d hardly ever heard of. But a serendipitous email offering the church for sale (an email he almost dismissed as spam) changed all that.

And after two years of vacillating over the decision — plus an encouraging nudge from his partner, Shaun — Bremer finally purchased the 1823 former United Methodist church in Phillip- sport, New York. “And suddenly it was my own little money pit,” he laughs.

As an architect whose firm, Architecture in For- mation, specializes in both renovations and ground-up residential builds, he wasn’t exactly going in blind. In fact, he savored the challenge.

“It was the ultimate guilty pleasure because it, in many ways, was the loft that I could never have afforded in New York City,” he says.

“The interior was this perfect little shoebox. It didn’t have a cathedral ceiling — it had a high, flat ceiling and was really stripped of ornamentation. It was very purist in a way and I tried to maintain that.” The former church’s 2,200-square-foot hall, which they call “the sanctuary,” blends the home’s kitchen, living, and dining areas in one open, communal space with soaring double-height ceilings. Up above, the choir loft serves as a TV and rec room.

“The question was: What do you do about bedrooms?” Bremer says. “Do you chop up that open space?”

Fortunately the basement — previously home to Sunday school, luncheons, and other church activities — was in good condition. Not only was it taller than the average basement, but it was also drier, and, unexpectedly, filled with natural light. “It had these beautiful tiny windows carved through three feet of rubble foundation on this bevel,” he explains. “They had almost a Corbusian character similar to La Tourette convent or Ronchamp chapel, where tiny windows are carved to bring in light.”

A staircase in the middle of “the sanctuary” leads down to three bedrooms and a bathroom in the basement. Tucked under the choir loft, the other bathroom is likely to appeal to those with slight exhibitionist tendencies. A mirrored backsplash in the kitchen serves as a long, one-way picture win- dow from the bathroom side, meaning people can shower while looking out onto the sanctuary. “It’s admittedly a little creepy and subversive,” Bremer laughs. “And it has left a few people feeling uncomfortable, but I’m completely comfortable with it.”

Bremer and his partner wanted to retain as much of the original church as possible, which was difficult since they had to meet current building codes in order to turn a disused church into a residence. “In many ways, it was like building a brand-new, hyper-energy-efficient house inside a 200-year-old pole barn,” he says.

That meant ripping off all the plaster, blowing in foam insulation, and adding in a storm sash to the original 14-foot triple-hung windows. “About half the glass in the window is original, which means that it’s that sort of very mottled, wavy, float glass,” he explains. “And then other panes had been replaced with more clear glass, so you get this very mottled, dappled light through them. We really wanted to preserve that.”

Unsurprisingly, they found themselves with a surplus of pews, which they put to creative use as headboards and footboards in the bedrooms, benches for the mudroom, and a long banquette in the dining area. In the corner of the dining area, which sits on what was the altar, is a magnificent organ that had formerly been used in the church. Overhead, three long pendant lights hang from the ceiling, retained from the original building.

Prior to Bremer’s purchase, the church had last been renovated and painted in the 1980s, evident in its white, mauve, and brown color palette (and the fake Trompe-l’œil mural at the altar). But while the colors weren’t quite the right fit for his design vision, the gradation of them was. “There was this white floor and white ceiling, and then there was this band of mid-tone accented by these very thin lines of a chair rail and a picture rail,” he says. “That defined the box of the interior sanctuary in such a clear way and I didn’t want to alter that, so I just grayed out the eighties colors.”

While they recreated most of the original trim and wainscoting, they managed to save parts where the pews had been attached to the wall and left shadow marks. “We’ve integrated some of those as sort of artifacts of what was,” he says.

Though still based in New York City, Bremer and his partner try to spend as many of their weekends up in the Catskills as possible, and the home gets plenty of use as the Phillipsport Church House on Airbnb. As for favorite haunts when they’re in the area, Bremer points to the nearby hamlet of Mountain Dale, home to galleries, cafes (especially High Voltage), and boutiques, and he also favors Westwind Orchard in Accord for pizza and cider.

“The ideal day,” he says, “is getting up, making breakfast for our guests, and going on a hike for a few hours. Then going to the cidery, having pizza, coming home and making a fire in the outdoor fire pit — and then just drinking and having a good time.”

By Mikki Brammer

Photography By Lawrence Braun

Volume 5