Tour a 170-Year-Old-Church That’s Now an Art-Filled Curator’s Home

Like countless renovators before her, Donna McNeil bought her Rockland, Maine, home with decidedly lofty plans. As the founding executive director of Rockland’s Ellis-Beauregard Foundation (a nonprofit that spearheads arts education and supports creators) and lifelong curator and arts advocate, her vision encompassed much more than her own day-to-day needs. “I [bought] this place to share it; I like to host people,” she says. “I don’t have a family or partner, and so I create one through community. There’s been so much partying and dancing in this space, and it [now] functions exactly as I envisioned in terms of welcoming folks in.”

Getting to that point involved both polishing up the massive (and now-171-year-old) former church’s beautiful bones and revisiting its previous caretakers’ decisions. Join us for an intimate look at how she has spent the last seven years honoring its origins, giving it a cost-conscious makeover and creating a public-facing private home that’s even greater than the sum of its parts.

“This church was built in 1852 [for the Second Baptists] by a man named General Hiram Berry, who sadly lost his life in the American Civil War,” Donna explains. Berry served in Maine’s state legislature and as Rockland’s mayor; he was also a carpenter and a builder, and the edifice he raised at the corner of Cedar and Brewster reflects his expertise and connections.

As depicted here, the church has not a single nail. “It’s pegged together and the beams are hewn,” Donna says. “It’s remained over all these years pretty plumb, which says a lot to the quality of building in [this] area. Furthermore, Rockland’s famous for shipbuilding, and I think some of those shipwrights came and worked on this house. It’s incredibly well built.”

Sadly, the church’s original clock tower, steeple and large Gothic window are now long gone — and so was much of its most recent coats of exterior paint. “The outside of the church was so in need of a paint job that I thought I just might polish the aluminum siding and have it turned into a big tin can,” Donna recalls. “I mean it was really down to the metal, pretty much!”

Donna made the then-unusual decision to repaint the church black. “That was seven years ago [and] black houses have become more in fashion [lately],” she notes. Furthermore, “black churches are traditional in Iceland, so I wasn’t that weird. But the neighborhood …” she laughs.

She didn’t mind causing a bit of a stir. “It makes [the building] less dominant in the neighborhood,” she says. “I think that it quiets it down. If I had made it another color, or even white, it would [look] even larger. I think it works, and I love the way that the black works with green.”

This shingled portico and the weathered and narrow stairs, pillars and railing that frame it were all additions to the church’s original face. Donna envisioned a cleaner look for her home’s first impression and lost no time in peeling them back; in early stages of her work on its exterior, in fact, a small landing and matching, monochromatic stairs were the only features that extended from the front door.

Now Donna enjoys both dramatic architecture and whimsy. “People thought I had turned this into a place for Satan worship and all kinds of bizarre things,” she recalls. “But I think what’s really nice about painting it black [is that] when you approach it at night you don’t really see the house — but you see these really long windows of light, these candles, if you will.”

The home’s sleek, contemporary face now features a statement railing that doubles as a warm welcome. “My neighbors were very pleased when I put a bright yellow railing on it, because that was my bit of humor. There’s a little playfulness to adding such a bright color.”

Donna found herself mystified by a dark, seemingly purposeless “mystery room” adjacent to the choir loft on the second floor. “Because my bedroom is up there [and] I didn’t want to have to come downstairs to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, I thought, ‘well I’ll make that a bathroom.’”

The space’s contemporary purpose is congruent with the devotional music that once rang out from this part of the building — and Donna’s renovation choice wrought a change in her, too. “Bathing in general is very ceremonial, and it’s also so metaphorical for birthing and cleansing and purifying,” Donna notes. “Ever since I put that bath in, I’ve become a devoted bath person.”

Donna’s carpenter transformed the gloomy, erstwhile “mystery room” by punching a hole in the exterior wall and giving the space access to both natural light and midcoastal foliage. “I situated [the] bathtub so you look out at this gorgeous maple tree, and in the fall it’s just bright orange,” she says. She also selected a long, marble-topped floating vanity to echo the space’s proportions.

The church first underwent renovation in 1907 under the ownership of the Christian Scientists; in 1962, it was sold to the Salvation Army. In those years, it was reconfigured as a series of much smaller, drop-ceilinged rooms: The former choir loft became offices, and spaces like this kitchen replaced the original footprint.

Donna needed a kitchen that could function as the heart of the entertaining space she had in mind. “I really wanted it to feel like a bar because I knew I wanted to have events in here and I wanted people to feel comfortable,” she recalls. “I wanted it to seat a lot of people so people could sit down and have a drink and feel like they were in both a private and a public space.”

She developed that atmosphere by making both calculated splurges (on the Fisher & Paykel refrigerator and Bertazzoni range) and key saves (with a sink, faucet and cabinets from Ikea and Corian-style countertops she found at Lowe’s). The key to a luxe-looking island? “I made this [waterfall countertop] very thick,” she explains. “If you make it thick then it looks more expensive even when it’s really not.” Maine photographer Dylan Hausthor’s spectacular forest scene across the window from the refrigerator, in turn, lends the kitchen symmetry and mystery.

A quintet of sleek, black bentwood barstools from CB2 complement the monumental kitchen island, and a pair of elegant alabaster lights from Antiques on Nine in Kennebunk pair beautifully with hydrangea and foliage from Donna’s garden. The black-shaded lamps in front of the windows were a serendipitous find: “They’re hammered [and] somebody downtown [made them],” she says. “I found them in an old junk shop. Stuff like that I just kept collecting, then made a kitchen!”

“When you have such a large space to work with you have to think about scale,” Donna says. “Things — objects and people — can feel easily diminished.” If you’re up to the challenge, you could revive the church’s original, awe-inspiring atmosphere, “but you put a small object in here and it becomes smaller,” she continues. “You have to build a space in a way where it relates to the scale of the architecture and that’s a challenge.”

Donna’s dining concept, in turn, began with a bit of upcycling. “I wanted to build a table and feed as many people as I could, and these pews were actually here,” she explains. “I wanted some things that were remnants of the history of this place. I kept the pews and I painted them, and I built this table to fit the pews exactly.”

Building the table took Donna and her friend Izabel Nielsen two days. “The challenge was keeping it sturdy with the least amount of support,” she recalls. She’s the first to admit that she’s in no danger of being mistaken for a carpenter, but she’s thrilled with how the painted table and repainted pews complement one another — and with the fact that her guests use them all the time.

Against the back wall, a massive Chris Doyle watercolor depicts the root system of an elder Maine tree — and celebrates interconnection and legacies. Donna bought another pew for the foot of the stage in nearby Ellsworth, Maine: “I thought, ‘eh, the more pews, the better!’” In her seven years as its hostess, the stage area has served as a venue for everything from projections and sea shanty singers to instrumentalists and dance companies.

Donna’s 4’ x 8’ coffee table is this area’s gravitational center. “I had this huge table built for a former large space, but it works beautifully here and it anchors the space, as do the rugs. They create little rooms, if you will, and divide the space,” she says.

Developing vignettes in a lofty home like this one is all about developing relationships between pieces. “They’re not typical living rooms, but people seem to gather and use the space in original ways. There’s some quite large pieces, and then there are some more intimate pieces. And I think if they play off of each other, then [they] can work in a large space like this."

Donna is drawn to pieces that express both the materiality of her home’s spectacular natural setting and the ingenuity of the artists that inhabit it with her — and this moment at the perimeter of one of her gathering areas features both. The two pieces at left on this credenza, for example, are a single sculpture. “The ‘bowl’ is a bowl shape carved out of a log — it’s still attached, so it feels as if it has emerged from the wood. It was made by Fritz Buehner” (an artist and Ellis-Beauregard Foundation colleague), she says.

The rectangular piece to its right, in turn, is by Stoneham, Maine’s Oliver Solmitz, and the pastel framed and mounted above the credenza is by the Woolwich artist Andrea Sulzer. “Almost everything I have is from Maine artists,” Donna explains. "Buy local!”

One of Donna’s first renovation labors of love is underfoot; she spent three weeks putting three coats of enamel on floors throughout the house. “The high gloss then reflects everything and you have a mirror effect going on, which also brightens the place and it always makes it look clean and fresh,” she explains. “If the sun comes out you can see how brilliant it all is when the sun graces the room.”

A textural, dune-inspired rug by Maine designer Angela Adams grounds a second casual sitting area. These iconic pieces are ideal spots for party guests to curl up during the performances Donna hosts; they come in handy between sessions when she invites the occasional dance company to rehearse at her place, too.

With an artist’s sense of balance and a magpie’s delight in gathering interesting things, Donna created this simple yet satisfying space. “The table is an old garden table, nicely patinaed,” she says. She topped it with a salvaged architectural detail that echoes the shingles on her home’s exterior. “The mirror is Italian” — from a favorite nearby local antique shop — “and looks like a curtain is being pulled to the side for one to have a look." The collection of vases below is as functional as it is decorative: “I love having cut flowers in the house and I have nowhere else to store [vases], so they become an installation of their own,” she says.

The vivid shades of yellow Donna deploys to great effect at her home’s entrance and in vivacious bursts throughout its interior — such as in her library area, where buttery shelves frame books and a collection of Turkish urns — counterbalance her more restrained choices. “It’s just such a happy color — sunshine,” she says. “Living in a primarily black-and-white environment, I thought the place needed a boost, and yellow is so pleasing — the inside of the front doors is also yellow — and less predictable than a blue or red family, at least in my mind.”

Donna tips her hat to Peter Davis, a previous owner who began the church's restoration in 2010 “and let this place breathe again,” she explains. “He repaired the tin ceilings, he put in new windows, a heating system, all the kind of grunt work that doesn’t interest me too much but really saved the place. I feel like I really continued the work that Peter Davis started and honored what he had as his vision for this place.”

Given that Donna lives in midcoastal Maine, she’s accustomed to curiosity about how in the world she keeps from freezing in her grand spaces. “People always ask me how I heat this place,” she says. “Peter put in four Rinnai heaters [in the living area downstairs], and then zoned the other spaces. They were also beige and I painted them black so they would sort of go away.”

Believe it or not, that does the trick. “I can have the heat very low and come back from work and have it at 75 [degrees] in half an hour. It’s nice and warm in the winter surprisingly and really pleasant in the summer; I’ve never air conditioned it.”

The deep-mustard half-wall surrounding the staircase in the choir loft displays a collection of shapely vintage hand mirrors; vintage ladies’ powder boxes ornament its upper edge. When it comes to finding unique additions to her space, “I’m always looking, and have things sourced from the Salvation Army (in the old days before people were hip to midcentury), eBay, antique stores everywhere I go, and bespoke items,” Donna says. “I’m often lucky at Corey Daniels Gallery in Wells, Pillars in Freeport and Antiques Etcetera in Rockland.”

Donna chose a massive, contemporary four-poster canopy bed to both counterbalance the color of her bedroom walls and echo their proportions. “I like the way it defines the space and mimics the shape of the room,” she says.

Donna was happy to leave the cylindrical pendants she found throughout the home intact. “I loved them,” she says. “The former owner, Peter Davis, bought and installed them in the bedrooms and hallways. They look deco to me and although [they’re] not of the period of the church, they work. Can’t be afraid to mix those centuries!”

A fresh coat of white paint highlights the tin ceilings the same previous owner had restored, and Donna doubled down on their delicacy with a romantic painted bed and a curvaceous antique mirror. While her principal aesthetic is contemporary and comparatively austere, she wanted her guest bedrooms to resonate with guests whose personalities might respond to other styles. “I call [this] the princess room; it has a high bed, it’s very Victorian, it’s got some tchotchkes in there,” she explains.

Donna deployed warm wood pieces in this guest bedroom, in turn, to give it a more traditionally masculine feel. “The sculpture above the bed is metal wire, [which is] also kind of masculine, and there is a wooden carved bust, arrows and abacus, as well as a tramp-wood carved mirror and a Balinese carved piece over the door.” “Tramp-wood” craft pieces were created in the 19th century out of reclaimed wood from cigar boxes and shipping crates.

Donna let her fondness for forms guide her hand in her home’s guest baths. Case in point: this unforgettably angular chamber. “This is quite a small space. I can pretty much stretch my arms across and touch the walls,” she notes. “So I made it a wet room, and I put in all that beautiful small marble stone so that you won’t slip in the shower … and then I got the tiniest sink in the universe!”

And why shouldn’t she? “Because it’s a wet room it doesn’t matter if [water] splashes all over, and I fell in love with it as an object,” she continues. “I like squares, and there’s a square toilet and people are like, ‘what?!?’ You know, people question my choices, but I don’t question my choices,” she says with a laugh.

In the powder room, Donna created a mini exhibit: she hung an antique mirror above the sink to reflect an antique pastel portrait that dates back to the 1950s, and a second, unframed portrait hangs on the left wall. Those pieces and the room’s vivid color give it a personality far greater than its footprint.