A Missouri couple spent a year converting an old church into an office space that can fit over 50 people. Now, they're listing it for $2.5 million — take a look inside.

A former church in St. Louis, Missouri, is on the market for $2.495 million. Constructed in 1929, the building has been used as an office space for the past 17 years.

The building used to be the site for the Holy Family Catholic Church until it was closed in 2005. 

In 2006, the former church was completely renovated and transformed into an office for an advertising company, Ted Wight, the listing agent from Dielmann Sotheby's International Realty, told Insider.

"It's hard to find a relatively small free-standing building that's unique and interesting, so these churches have my name all over them," Chris Frank, the CEO of the advertising agency Cfx, told Insider.

It took six months to create the architectural drawings for the new office, and another year for the renovation to be completed.

Church pews have been removed to make space for 28 work desks on one side and a mini-photography studio on the other side, photos show.

The photography studio takes up about a third of the floor space, Frank said, and can be removed to make space for more desks if needed.

It's not the first time that Cfx has converted an unconventional building into their office, Frank said.

Prior to the church, the agency — which Frank runs with his wife, Megan — had renovated and operated out of a former bank building.

"The inspector in that building said, 'This is great. You want to buy an old school, an old church, or an old bank. They're just built better and differently.' So ironically, I've checked two of those off the list," Frank added.

The sale includes the former church and an attached rectory building — both of which add up to over 16,000 square feet of space, per the listing.

Although it's an office now, the place still "feels like a church," Wight said.

"The exterior has not been changed," Wight said. "The interior still has beautiful terrazzo floors, some stained glass windows, and frescos."

The advertising agency moved into the former rectory on the church grounds even before the conversion was completed.

"We were on site for the majority of our construction so I got to experience all that, which is fun," Frank said.

It was important to Frank that the converted office still preserved the architectural details of the original church.

One of the ways to ensure that the old and new features look cohesive is to keep them separate.

"A lot of our partition walls are floating — with the press of a button, they go up and down. So does part of the photo studio wall," Frank said.

The panels are connected to steel cables that go all the way up to the ceiling, which is about 50-feet high, Frank said. They're stationary in the spot where they're placed, so they can't be rearranged, although they can be moved up and down.

"Even the privacy panels for all the desks are an inch away from the pillars of this building. There's a space between everything, so the two worlds live independently," he added.

The former altar space has been converted into a board room with a curved, horseshoe-shaped marble table that can seat 30 people.

All the furniture in the office is custom-made, Frank said.

"It was quite the challenge to have the boardroom table made because I fell in love with those trumpet-style table legs, but the manufacturer was concerned that they wouldn't support the weight of the marble," Frank said.

In the end, he had to hire an industrial engineer to design a table support system to demonstrate that the legs would be sturdy.

"I had to have an entire support system built for the underneath of that table, and get that all signed off on before they would finally sell me the legs," Frank added.

On both ends of the sanctuary are massive paintings of biblical figures that have been preserved from the building's time as a church.

"We were going to donate them to the art museum. But when they came out to see it, they said that the paintings are more valuable installed in this building," Frank said.

Even though the building has been desanctified, Frank says that the space still feels sacred.

"In the church's mind, it's no longer a holy space because they desanctified it in their last service, but no one can deny a lot of prayers, baptisms, weddings, and funerals have happened here," he added. "It's a holy space and you can feel it. There's just this peace here."

An ideal buyer would be another creative firm, or someone who wants to open a co-working space in the city.

"At least in St. Louis, all of the co-working spaces are sold out or have waiting lists," Frank said. "And this space is ready for that — it could be a co-working space with little to no extra work, and it'll probably be a pretty big business."

Apart from the sanctuary and the board room, there are still plenty of common areas that can be turned into a workspace with the addition of extra desks.

Although the former church building is considered a commercial property, future owners can also turn it into a residential space without extra permits, Wight said.

The entire property comes with five bedrooms and nine bathrooms, together with a full kitchen, per the listing. 

The former church was first listed for sale in October 2022, per listing history. 

Houses in the Tower Grove neighborhood of Saint Louis, Missouri, have a median listing home price of $209,000, per data from real-estate platform Realtor.com. There are currently 24 single-family homes for sale in the area, with prices ranging from $62,555 to $2.495 million. The converted church is the most expensive listing in the area.

Frank says that he and his wife are selling the church now as they're looking for their next architectural project.

Prior to the church office and before they had two kids, the couple moved every two years.

"Sounds corny but our physical spaces have always been like our life-size palettes — it's where we get to express ourselves. But for the last 17 years, we stopped and maintained a business and raised a couple of daughters," Frank said.

Now that their children are grown up, it's time for them to go back and stoke their creativity with a new project, Frank added.

"The perceived distraction from our business Cfx to do another space isn't a distraction at all," he added. "It fuels my overall energy, it fuels my creativity, and everything just gets worked on that much harder."