Noble Hartford

Noble Hartford is a noteworthy undertaking that responds to all the goals outlined in the city of Hartford’s Plan of Conservation and Development, offering eight apartments (4 one-bedroom and 4 two-bedroom) with street facing bay windows in the living rooms and Juliet balconies in the bedrooms, an automobile fueling station and electric recharging stations, a market style convenience store with a fruit and salad bar, bicycle racks, and an outdoor corner plaza area. These are much needed amenities that encourage and promote the health, safety, and welfare of the residents living in the neighborhood. Collectively, their existence is a major step toward the development of the southern fringes of downtown Hartford as the city pushes forward in its pedestrian oriented urban renewal.

Local zoning regulations played a major role in the design of this project. The building utilizes storefront windows at the ground floor level and has a high degree of transparency. While the gas pumps and parking area occupy a large portion of the site, careful consideration was given to their placement as it relates to important pedestrian view sheds. Not only were they placed behind the building, atypical of gas station design, but the side and rear yards were screened with natural buffering.

The required space for vehicular circulation around the gas pumps required a large portion of the site to be dedicated site use, which left a narrow sliver of land available for the building. The narrow building form was initially seen as a constraint in the design, but it actually turned out to be an advantage that necessitated a single-loaded corridor and allowed for the units to face the streets and the corridor to face the pumps.