Elm Park Painters — Elm Park Neighborhood Local Historic District

The blocks just west of downtown, between Highland Street on the north and Elm Street on the south, became the Elm Park Neighborhood Local Historic District after a city study that began in March 2021, when Becker College closed and left 34 parcels in the area in transition. The study counted 207 historic buildings on 212 parcels across 64.5 acres. Colonial Revival (55 buildings) and Queen Anne (40) lead the style count, followed by Victorian Eclectic, Craftsman, Second Empire and Shingle Style houses.

The neighborhood filled in over two distinct waves. The oldest houses are Greek Revival, built from the mid-1840s at the eastern end along Elm and West Streets. After the area was subdivided in the 1870s, large single-family houses went up from the south end northward through the 1880s. Then, after the old Agricultural Fair Grounds were sold in 1899, the land between Highland, Sever, Cedar and Russell Streets became the West Side Realty Plot, where deed restrictions capped buildings at two families. That is why Roxbury and Somerset Streets are lined with modest Colonial Revival two-families finished by the mid-1920s, while William Street got bigger single-family houses.

For a painter, the result is a neighborhood where three or four very different jobs sit on the same block: an 1880s Queen Anne with wood shingle in the gables, a Second Empire house with a mansard roof line, an English Revival house with stucco and half-timbering, and a 1920s two-family with plain clapboard and a front porch.

One thing works in owners' favor here. When the city wrote the ordinance for this district, it chose to exclude the color of paint from Historical Commission review, along with storm windows and doors and at-grade walks on their existing footprint. Crown Hill, Montvale and Massachusetts Avenue do not get that exclusion. So a new palette for a Shingle Style house on Cedar Street does not need commission sign-off. Changing a material or the design of something visible from a street or the park is another matter: replacing wood clapboard or shingle with a different product, or rebuilding a porch differently, goes before the commission before a building permit.

Wood shingle and clapboard, often on the same wall

The study's property index records wood shingle siding on many of the district's Queen Anne houses, and some entries list shingle and clapboard on the same building. Shingle surfaces soak up primer unevenly and hold moisture at the butt edges, so prep and coating choice differ from the clapboard below. Swapping shingle for clapboard or vinyl is a material change, which the commission reviews.

Stucco, half-timbering and slate on the period-revival houses

English Revival houses here combine stucco with wood half-timbering, and the property index records slate roofs on a number of Victorian-era houses. Painting the timber without staining the stucco takes careful cutting in, and ladders and staging have to stay off slate, which cracks under foot traffic.

Mostly rented, mostly multi-unit

Census Tract 7316.01, which covers Cedar, William, Roxbury and Dix Streets and reaches past the district, shows only about 11% of occupied units owner-occupied and most units in buildings of three or more. Interior repaints often happen between tenants, so the schedule tends to be set by lease dates.

Almost everything predates lead-paint limits

In that tract, about 87% of units were built before 1980, nearly half before 1940, and the median build year is 1941. Scraping old exterior trim or sanding interior woodwork here should be planned as lead-safe work from the start, and any unit where a child under six lives falls under the Massachusetts Lead Law.