In the pantheon of ambitious renovation projects, Brandon and Amy Phillips’s 65,000-sq.-ft. factory building in Geneva, N.Y., may rank right at the top. When they bought the former straight-razor factory, which dates to the 1880s, all the windows had been boarded up outside and sheetrocked over on the inside. The original 16-ft. ceilings were obscured behind multiple dropped ceilings added one after another over the years. For the first couple months of the renovation, they and a crew of 20 filled a 40-yard dumpster each day. As soon as the building was habitable, the Phillipses got their woodshop up and running and continued the renovation on the side. Much of the factory’s first floor is devoted to shop and storage space for their company Miles and May, where they and four employees design and build furniture for houses, hotels, and restaurants. The second floor is home to a nonprofit organization they founded that hosts art exhibits, concerts, poetry readings, dances, letterpress printing workshops, and performance pieces. The third floor? They are still renovating that-in their spare time.

Launch Gallery