Fenway Painters — Fenway / Kenmore, Boston

The Boston Landmarks Commission studied this area from September 1983 to July 1984. Its report found two main kinds of housing: row houses built between 1871 and about 1910, and large apartment complexes from roughly 1910 to 1930. Georgian or Colonial Revival, it said, is by far the best represented style.

The West Fens filled in last. Developers there found the land more speculative and put up four- and five-story apartment buildings rather than row houses, and south of Boylston Street the land went almost entirely to large adjoining apartment complexes oriented toward the Back Bay Fens.

Census numbers show the same split today. In Census Tract 104.08, which takes in Jersey Street, 92% of homes are in buildings of 10 to 49 units, 86% predate 1980, and the median year built is 1938. The tract that includes Peterborough Street looks different: 47% of its units were built in 2000 or later, and 57% sit in buildings of 50 or more units.

In tracts like these, interior painting happens one unit at a time inside a large building, and only 12.3% of the Jersey Street tract's units are owner-occupied. Exterior work is limited to the painted parts of a masonry front, which the building owner or condo association controls.

Plaster and lead in the older blocks

If a unit in a 1910s apartment house still has its original plaster, those walls can carry many coats of paint, and the oldest can contain lead. Any sanding or scraping in pre-1978 rooms should follow Massachusetts lead-safe practice. The City's Lead Safe Boston program offers free lead paint inspections and, for owners who meet its income and household rules, forgivable loans.

Masonry that should stay bare

The survey describes Gainsborough Street's red brick bow fronts with white limestone trim, a tan brick apartment house at 114 The Fenway, and terra-cotta fronts at 80–84 The Fenway and on Peterborough Street. Boston's Back Bay and Beacon Hill commissions bar painting masonry fronts that were never painted and prohibit sandblasting to strip it, and those rules are a sound guide for these fronts too. Here the paint work belongs on sash, doors, cornices and ironwork, not the brick or stone.

Painted brick on Medfield Street

The 1910s apartment buildings at 12–34 Medfield Street were described in 1984 as having white painted brick walls, wrought iron balconies and red tile roofs. When brick that is already painted gets redone, use a coating made for masonry and take off loose paint by hand scraping rather than abrasive blasting. The balcony iron needs rust removal and a metal primer of its own.

St. Botolph's review district

The City lists the St. Botolph Area Architectural Conservation District, designated in 1981, under Fenway/Kenmore. Exterior work visible from a public way, including from the Southwest Corridor Park, has to be approved before it starts. Building there started in the 1880s, with single-family houses first and multi-family buildings filling in during the 1890s.