The hillside lot was previously the location of the original St. Raymond’s rectory house, before it was razed in the 1950’s during the construction of the large masonry rectory building located just down the hill on Eighth Street. For seventy years the land remained an undeveloped open lot – a large 100’ wide gap in the urban fabric of the Summit neighborhood. The new 23-unit apartment building, on the location of the former rectory house, fills this void. The apartment building’s long rectangular four-story massing is of a similar size and scale of the adjacent yellow brick rectory building, and the older 1920’s convent building to the rear of the site. Both the former rectory and convent were previously converted to apartments by the project team. (Eighteen apartments in the rectory and eleven in the convent) The new apartment building completes the grouping of three residential buildings and completes the transformation of the former St Raymond’s Roman Catholic parish center.

The recessed entry lobby and vertical circulation zones are clad in matte black ribbed metal panels and split the building’s mass into three smaller volumes. The building is clad in of vertically-oriented fiber-cement panels arranged in long horizontal bands that are painted a rich brown color. These bands Inflect to create recessed bay windows that introduce depth and shadow to the otherwise taut skin of the building. The windows and the surrounding black panels create the larger blocks of dark tones that stagger across the elevations and creating a shifting pattern. The exterior design speaks to both exuberance of the ornate gothic splayed masonry openings of the convent building at the rear and the flat austere masonry walls with misaligned punched windows of the rectory building down the hill.  The differing orientations of the inflected bays introduces directionality and dynamism to the otherwise very rational building.

The street facing corner of the building is recessed at ground level to create a covered entryway and elevated south facing entry terrace. The lobby is wrapped on two sides in floor to ceiling glass storefront and shaded by the overhanging building mass above.

The one-bedroom apartments each have their own inflected bay window with adjacent angled wall. These full height inflected windows shift throughout the building make apartment units unique and create alcoves for shelving. A wall of oak kitchen cabinetry anchors the living space and extends to the entry hall of the apartment. The kitchen has tartufo stone counters, matte charcoal upper cabinets, and dark tile backsplash that complement the warm tones of the oak cabinets and flooring. At the entry door, a tartufo stone counter with matte charcoal paneled alcove is a drop zone for belongings when coming in and out of the apartment.

The bathrooms have dark tiled floor that extends up to become a half wall in the shower. The upper wall of the shower is wrapped in narrow vertical tile that inflects to create a shower niche shelf.