Brickyard Painters — Summer Street, Neptune Boulevard & South Common

According to the Massachusetts Historical Commission, most of Lynn's workers' housing from 1830 to 1870 stood in the Brickyards section of West Lynn along Summer Street. After 1850 the common form was a simple gable-end side-hall cottage, and MHC still pointed to surviving streetscapes of them here, with early cottages listed at Summer Street near Boston Street. Global Boston, a Boston College history project, adds that more than 850 three-deckers went up across Lynn between 1905 and 1913, most of them in the Brickyard, where many Greek immigrants first settled around St. George Orthodox Church. MHC places most of Lynn's immigrant-era Catholic, Jewish and Greek Orthodox churches in the Brickyards area and along Western Avenue, most of them wood-framed Queen Anne designs.

Then came clearance. Global Boston says the city used federal urban renewal money to demolish much of the old Brickyard in the 1960s. MHC writes that Neptune Boulevard and the building along it destroyed everything south of Summer Street between Commercial and Market Streets, and that only fragments of the early workers' housing survive, showing double-house plans.

The census shows the split. In the tract containing Summer Street at Neptune Boulevard, 325 of 965 homes date from 1939 or earlier while 301 were built in the 1970s, and the median year built is 1970. The adjoining tract toward South Common Street has a median of 1967, and half its units are in buildings of 50 or more apartments.

Old frame survivors next to newer construction

A surviving cottage or three-decker here can share a block with a large apartment building of much later date. The frame houses call for wood repair, scraping and priming of bare spots; the newer building calls for prep and coating chosen for whatever its walls are actually made of. Look at each building on its own terms.

Fragments mean irregular buildings

Where only part of an old double house survives, the wall that once joined its missing half may have been closed up later with different materials. Check a wall like that for patched siding and open seams before choosing paint for an exterior repaint in Lynn.

Mostly renters, often many units

Only 27% of occupied homes in the Summer Street–Neptune tract are owner-occupied, and in the adjoining tract it is 5.5%. For owners and managers of multi-unit buildings, hallway and turnover work has to be scheduled around tenants; condo and multi-unit painting explains how shared spaces are handled.

Pre-1940 paint in the surviving houses

The houses that escaped clearance are the oldest on the block, so assume lead in their trim, sashes and porch floors until tested. Our lead-safe painting page lays out the federal rules for pre-1978 homes.