Diamond District Painters — Ocean Street to Lynn Shore Drive

The Diamond Historic District runs roughly a mile, from Washington Square at Broad and Nahant Streets east to the Swampscott line, with Ocean Street as its spine and the Nahant Bay seawall along its southern edge. Its 1996 National Register nomination counts 590 contributing resources across 69.5 acres, in styles running from the Federal period through the Early Modern era.

The Massachusetts Historical Commission singles out the towered Queen Anne houses on Atlantic and Ocean Streets as a streetscape among the most significant of its kind in New England. Colonial Revival houses followed along the shore, gambrel cottages filled smaller side-street lots, and before World War I builders added English Cottage designs in stucco and brick on Lynn Shore Drive. Georgian Revival brick houses went up on Ocean Street after that war.

Not everything here is a single-family Victorian. The nomination says many original houses were converted to multiple units, and zoning exceptions after 1946 and 1964 allowed garden and high-rise apartments, with condominium infill especially along Nahant Street. In Census Tract 2067, which contains addresses on Atlantic, Baltimore, Nahant and Wave Streets, 16.3% of housing units sit in buildings of 50 or more units, while 16.5% are detached single-family homes.

Pattern shingles and original siding

The nomination points to houses that kept their original pattern shingles, such as 141 Ocean Street (about 1884), and Shingle Style houses with original shingle siding. Fancy-cut shingles and Queen Anne trim take hand work: loose courses get refastened, split shingles get replaced in kind, and paint goes on by brush so the pattern stays crisp.

Stucco from the 1910s to the 1930s

English-inspired estate houses, Spanish Revival designs and houses like 2 Landon Circle (1921) were finished in stucco, according to the nomination. Painted stucco calls for crack repair first and a breathable masonry coating, so it makes sense to price and specify a stucco elevation separately from the wood trim around it.

165 carriage houses and garages

The district counts 165 carriage houses and auto garages of 19th- and early-20th-century date as contributing structures. When repainting a property, include the garage or barn in the walk-around and probe its sills, door bottoms and lowest boards for soft wood before any paint is planned.

Residing versus restoration

As of the 1995 survey, some Ocean Street estate houses had lost character through residing, while owners on Atlantic and Baltimore Streets had been restoring Victorian detail since 1970. If original shingles or trim survived on your house, scraping and repainting them preserves that detail; covering it with new cladding is the change the survey flagged on Ocean Street.