Another Church to condo conversion and an evening with New England Home Magazine

As I've mentioned before, I love a conversion property and I have a particular thing for church conversions. Churches are just such unusual spaces - large, lots of millwork and stained glass, not to mention so much history - baptisms, weddings, funerals. Life in all its stages. So, tonight, I very happily attended a networking event at the Mt. Auburn Village, hosted by New England Home Magazine.

What was once the First Baptist Church in Watertown, MA is now in the process of becoming luxury condominiums that is part of a larger grouping of conversions.

The church

The Parsonage

The Map - Parsonage on left, church on right

The project - by Haddad Hakansson LLC - still has a long way to go, but the entrance and one of the units has been completed and staged.  Here's the entry, with mailboxes and center hall table. (ignore the beer bottles!)

How gorgeous is the ceiling? Am thinking that the sconces and pendant are from the original church.

Here is the finished unit - living room:

The home office which is right off the kitchen - love the stained glass insert.

The kitchen - the design style for this project is clearly traditional. Beautiful cherry cabinetry and Viking appliances throughout!

Here was one of the other units that's not quite finished. It shows the interesting challenges that can arise with these types of projects - what do you do with the support column? Build some cabinetry and a counter around it. Honestly, I'm not sure this was the most successful solution to the challenge...

But, back to the architecture - how fantastic is this wall? It's the focal point in the living room of this as yet unfinished unit. Now, there are definitely design challenges here - the window looks right into another building - so the owners will want to put some kind of covering on the windows from the sash down.  Or not...  baptisms, weddings, funerals... and now peep shows!

More fantastic millwork. You could do so many interesting treatments in the spaces between the arches.  Beautiful accent colors, or even a custom built-in book case of some kind.

And the party held in one of the other units:

And finally, say hello to Betsey Abeles Kravitz, Associate Publisher of New England Home Magazine, and Douglas Weisman. Btw - how gorgeous is Betsey's necklace???

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