May 30, 2011 at 7:02 pm by TU Magazines
Castle photo by Chris Sawicki.
Behind the Castle Door
By Dayelin Roman/Life@Home
Susan Phemister wanted a church. The family of five was bursting from the seams of their Brooklyn home and was looking for an old sanctuary outside of New York City to rehab into a weekend place.
But as she browsed eBay one day, she found something different, and asked her husband what he thought of moving into a castle she found in Amsterdam. Next thing she knew, the family was on the move and the home in Brooklyn was sold.
Susan and Manfred Phemister have lived in what was once a National Guard armory since 2005, when their three children were ages 2, 4 and 5. In one year, they rehabbed one wing of the building into their home, and another two wings into guest rooms to run a bed and breakfast. A fourth area was rehabbed for events. A 10,000 square foot gym like those in high schools lies off the family’s wing.
The 36,000-square-foot castle was built in 1894 and was decommissioned as an armory in 1995. It has a rifle range, a fallout shelter and a billiard room, and is one of 100 armories built in the state of New York, 50 of which are still used by the National Guard. Other decommissioned sites have been turned into art galleries, museums and concert venues, but the Phemisters’ is the only one to have been converted into a home.
Three days a week, Susan works in Manhattan, and takes a train home on Wednesday evenings to work from home on Thursdays and Fridays. Manfred sells CDs and DVDs on the internet from a huge collection that overruns the entire castle basement.
They’ve renamed the armory Amsterdam Castle, made a website and have a Facebook page. In the guest rooms, couples have come from as far as Europe to propose on the balcony and film crews routinely ask to use the historic spaces.
The family’s private wing is a three-bedroom home where the master bedroom is in a turret, the windows decorated with table runners from Target. ”My kids are a little bit blasé about it,” Susan say of the children, now 10, 9 and 7. “Sometimes they say, ‘Why can’t we live in a normal house?’”
The Phemisters tried to reuse what they could in their renovation. Wooden lockers from one room in the castle, for instance, now have a second life as a kitchen pantry. In the hallway, more of the same lockers serve as closets. In the eat-in kitchen, the table is made from wood remnants that remained from rehab. The same is true of the cabinets. A spice rack was made out of the original doorway to the gym. Framed dishtowels from eBay decorate the walls.
The industrial looking stove seems like something the National Guard could have used to feed soldiers in the 1950s, but Susan says the odd-looking appliance is the result of her obsession with an English method of food prep.
The range is called an Aga, a British cast-iron system that runs on a pilot light and is constantly emitting warmth. The system does not have knobs or controls, only burners and small ovens that are always kept at different cooking temperatures.
Susan says the system is fuel efficient, and that she uses it not only to cook food, but to dry anything that’s wet. “It’s this brand that is associated with old English homes,” she says. “Once you go Aga, it’s like this magic secret.”
An eclectic mix of antique and modern pieces dots the spaces throughout the castle. Susan proudly points out a new bison head on a recent Friday morning as a pair of men ask her where she wants it hung. As they climb a ladder to measure a wall for the large bovine near a moose on loan from the nearby Walter Elwood Museum, Susan remarks on its antiquity. “He’s old, so no new bison was harmed,” she says of the head she found at Silver Fox Salvage in Albany.
The couple often browse antique stores, looking for deals on large items. “Show us the biggest antique you haven’t sold in five years,” Manfred says they often ask dealers. “Those huge pieces fit here,” Susan adds.
When the Elwood Museum was moving across town, she says, they called her to say their stuffed pheasants were for sale. The couple bought 20 of them, now spread throughout the building.
When they searched for back-to-back fireplaces to put in their kitchen and living room, they turned again to eBay, where they found a man in Broadalbin who bought remnants of old houses and churches. They purchased a set of shortened pews from the same man, now kept in the gym.
Antiques are also prominent in the bed-and-breakfast wings, one of which holds a desk that was once a piano. “The bed and breakfast is helping to pay for the ongoing building renovations,” Susan says. “This building is not about money. A hundred percent of what we receive is reinvested.”
As Susan steps into a pale blue room off the gym with chipping paint and old wooden floors, she look at what she calls their next project. “This,” she says, “is going to be the man cave.”
Photos by Nancy Bruno/Life@Home
