Downtown Marlborough Painters — Main Street, Monument Square and Granger Boulevard

The city's 1994–95 historic survey describes how, by the end of the 1890s, Main Street between Bolton and Mechanic Streets had filled with store blocks, many of them built where shoe factories had closed. Some had meeting halls upstairs; others had flats on the upper floors. Fires and the urban renewal of the 1960s and '70s took a good share of that corridor, but most of the survivors from the 1880s and '90s are four-story Queen Anne rows of brick and stone, like the 1880 Temple Building at 149 Main and the 1891 Warren Block at 155 Main. The Frye Building of 1892, at Mechanic and Lincoln, adds cast-iron ornament and the city's only rounded commercial corner.

The survey also records a slump: courts, the high school and the police station moved out of the center, and the city turned to federal block grants from the 1980s on. In December 2014 the City Council unanimously adopted the Marlborough Village District, which added residential projects to the uses allowed downtown and revised design standards for new buildings.

Census Tract 3213.01 takes in Main Street, Granger Boulevard, Mechanic Street and lower Lincoln Street. Of 2,156 housing units, 78.8% predate 1980, and only 23.3% are detached single-family houses. Two-family and three- or four-unit buildings together account for 36.1%, and another 16.0% sit in buildings of 50 or more units. Owners occupy 27.9% of homes.

Paint color counts as an alteration near Monument Square

Marlborough's only local historic district under Chapter 40C is the Monument Square Historic District. Its ordinance defines a change in exterior color as an alteration, so a new color on a facade visible from a public way needs a certificate from the Historic District Commission before work starts. Repainting in the same design and materials falls under the ordinary-maintenance exemption. The district map is held by the City Clerk; confirm whether your address is inside it.

Build the review clock into the schedule

The commission has 14 days after filing to decide whether an application involves features it controls, and 60 days to rule, unless the applicant agrees in writing to more time. Starting without a required certificate can bring fines of $10 to $500, with each day counted separately.

Nearly 79% of units predate 1980

In this tract 1,698 of 2,156 units were built before 1980. On a pre-1978 building, paid work that disturbs more than 6 square feet of paint per room inside or 20 square feet outside falls under the EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule. In a rental with a child under six, the Massachusetts Lead Law puts responsibility on the owner whether or not they knew about the lead. Our lead-safe painting page covers the setup.

Masonry fronts, wood everywhere else

Where a block's brick or stone walls are unpainted, the paint scope comes down to wood and metal: window sash, storefront trim, cornices and cast iron such as the Frye Building's ornament. The tract's two- to four-unit buildings, which hold 36.1% of its homes, are a different job, with shared entries and stairs and more than one household to schedule around.