Charlestown Painters — Monument Square, Town Hill & Green Street

The National Register nomination for the Monument Square Historic District gives its significant dates as 1839 to 1912. Deed restrictions written in 1839, planned lot sizes and a concentrated building period gave the square a ring of masonry houses unified in scale and materials. The first pair built after the square was laid out, at 6–7 Monument Square Avenue, dates to 1847; later houses include brick Italianate rows with slate mansard roofs. The nomination counts only three frame buildings on the square and describes the surrounding area as smaller, more modest masonry buildings on smaller lots.

Green Street is built of wood. Architectural historian Keith Morgan describes 23–58 Green Street, built roughly 1836–1870 on subdivided pasture, as clapboarded frame housing: two-story Greek Revival duplexes, some back-to-back, then three-story flat-roofed town houses with Italianate trim. He notes that raising the top story later in the century was a typical Charlestown alteration. Town Hill is a separate National Register district whose listed styles are Georgian, Federal and mid-19th-century revival.

Census data for the tract that includes Monument Square counts 2,298 housing units, 76.5% of them built in 1939 or earlier. Single-family attached homes, the census category that covers row houses, make up 23.2%, and 63.5% of occupied units are owner-occupied, a higher share than the citywide 35.7%.

Painted wood on brick fronts

On a brick row house the paint is concentrated in cornices, dormers, sash, doors and window frames. Those pieces are small but high and exposed, and a dormer in a slate mansard is reached from staging or a lift set on the sidewalk.

Clapboard duplexes and raised top stories

Where a top story was added in the 1800s, the clapboard and trim above that line may differ in profile from the floors below. Matching repairs to each section, instead of using one stock board everywhere, keeps the change readable.

A district still being written

The Landmarks Commission accepted the Monument Square petition in 2022 and posted a working draft report in September 2026; a community meeting is set for October 21. At an April 2026 event, attendees voted 19 to 5 against regulating paint colors. That is input, not a rule. Until a district is designated and its standards adopted, there is no district-wide paint review; the City notes that Charlestown's current protection is limited to individual Landmarks.

Pre-1940 paint layers

With 76.5% of units in the Monument Square tract built before 1940, porch rails, doors and sash can carry early lead paint. Scraping or sanding them falls under Massachusetts lead-safe rules, inside and out.