East Somerville Painters — Mt. Vernon, Perkins & Pearl Streets

Development here began in earnest in the 1840s and 1850s on a pattern of tight streets and modest house lots. Many of the surviving Greek Revival and Italianate houses from those decades sit on upper Mt. Vernon, Mt. Pleasant and Perkins Streets. Pearl Street came later, in the 1870s and 1880s, as a ridge-top street of large single-family houses that have since been subdivided. A 2017 Federal Highway Administration brief on the Broadway reconstruction described the area's housing as mostly pre-1940, with closely spaced duplexes and triple-deckers mixed among single-family homes.

The best-documented group is the Mount Vernon Street Historic District, a National Register listing from 1989 that covers the even-numbered houses at 8 through 24. Four are 1½-story side-hall Greek Revival houses from around 1850, an older Federal-period house stands behind number 12, and 22–24 is a Second Empire duplex from about 1880. Number 20 is sheathed in flushboard siding cut to imitate stone blocks, while number 12 has been covered in synthetic siding. Other individually listed houses include the Gustavus G. Prescott House on Perkins Street, a rare surviving five-bay, center-entry Greek Revival, and houses at 81 Pearl Street and 8 Mt. Pleasant Street.

Census Tract 3514.03, which contains 16 Mt. Vernon Street and the listed houses at 65–67 Perkins, 81 Pearl and 8 Mt. Pleasant Streets, counts 1,830 housing units: 63.1% built in 1939 or earlier, 79.1% before 1980, and 7.3% since 2010. About 26.8% of units are in three- or four-unit buildings and 38.7% in buildings of five or more.

Closely spaced houses

The FHWA brief describes closely spaced duplexes and triple-deckers, and small 1840s lots often leave narrow side yards. Ladders and staging may have to stand on a neighbor's side, and overspray or paint chips can land on the next house, so a neighbor's permission and careful containment are part of planning an exterior job here.

Flushboard and Greek Revival trim

Flat boards made to look like cut stone, as at 20 Mt. Vernon Street, only keep that effect when the joints stay crisp, so old paint filling the grooves is worth working out rather than burying. Greek Revival corner boards, wide frieze boards and door surrounds are simple shapes, but they are large flat areas where peeling shows plainly.

Old houses wrapped in newer siding

Synthetic siding over a 19th-century house, as on one Mt. Vernon Street example, changes what needs painting: often only trim, doors, windows and porches. If you are thinking of removing it to restore the wood beneath, the condition of those original boards is the open question, and in a Local Historic District that kind of change may need review.

Subdivided houses and shared buildings

Pearl Street's large homes were split into units, and nearly two in five tract units are in five-plus buildings. Interior hallways, stairwells and exteriors in those buildings belong to several households at once. Our condo painting and interior painting pages cover how shared spaces are handled.