French Hill Painters — Lincoln Street, Gibbon Street and the west side

Marlborough's 1994–95 historic survey places French Hill among the new neighborhoods of shoeworker housing that opened between 1870 and 1914, west of the old West Village. In 1890 the French Evangelical Mission put up a wood-frame church at the corner of Lincoln and Gibbon Streets, on land given by manufacturer Samuel Boyd, for the city's first French-speaking Protestants. St. Ann's parish, formed in 1921 with Italian-speaking priests, built its own church on that site in 1933 to serve the Italian-American community that had been settling on the hill since shortly after 1900.

According to the same survey, sections of Lincoln Street were the first roads in the city to be paved, machine shops, a coal company and a lumber yard stood near the rail sidings in the Lincoln Street area, and between 1914 and 1945 a second commercial area kept expanding along Lincoln Street on French Hill.

No official boundary exists, so the numbers here come from Census Tract 3213.02, which holds Gibbon Street along with Winter Avenue and Clover Hill Street. Its median year built is 1966. Just under a quarter of its 1,555 units (23.1%) date from 1939 or earlier, 19.3% from the 1960s and 17.6% from the 1980s; in all, 65.7% predate 1980. Detached single-family houses make up 39.3% of units, buildings of two to four units another 29.0%, and owners live in 58.1% of occupied homes. The hill likely extends into neighboring Tract 3215 as well, which holds 303 Lincoln Street, an apartment complex marketed under the French Hill name.

Three building eras in one tract

Late-1800s worker houses, 1960s homes and 1980s construction can each have different siding and coating histories. The city's 1994–95 survey found that synthetic siding was the most common change that cost significant Marlborough buildings their National Register eligibility, so an old house may turn out to have vinyl or aluminum over its original walls. Prep and primer choices follow what is actually on each house.

Two- to four-family houses

With 29.0% of units in small multi-family buildings, and owners occupying 58.1% of homes, a repaint can mean coordinating with tenants or a co-owner, working around shared stairs and entries, and agreeing on one color scheme for the whole building.

Lead-safe work on older units

About two-thirds of homes in the tract were built before 1980. For paid work that disturbs more than 6 square feet of paint per room inside or 20 square feet outside on a pre-1978 home, the EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule requires lead-safe practices by a certified firm. See lead-safe painting.

No local historic district

Marlborough's only Chapter 40C district is Monument Square, downtown. We found no local historic district covering French Hill, so unless an address turns out to sit inside the Monument Square district map, a color change here should not need Historic District Commission review.