Germantown Painters — The Shed's Neck peninsula on Town River Bay

The land was called Shed's Neck from the 1640s. In the 1750s it was set aside for a colony of German glassmakers and weavers; that venture had collapsed by 1760, but the name Germantown stuck, and shipbuilding later became the main industry. That background comes from a Wikipedia summary that cites Pattee's 1879 history of Braintree and Quincy, so treat it as general history.

A National Register form for the Brown-Hodgkinson House at 42 Bicknell Street fills in the 1800s. Capt. Charles A. Brown built it in 1832 after he and Capt. Elisha Holmes arrived from Provincetown to start a fishing community. Cod and mackerel fishing gave way to whaling by the 1840s, and the Sailor's Snug Harbor retirement home opened in the 1850s, though none of its first buildings remain. The house is clapboarded late Federal with brick end chimneys and a double hip roof. A Queen Anne cross gable was added in the 1880s and a Colonial Revival porch in the 1910s. The form says it is the largest of several 1830s houses on the street. When the form was prepared in the late 1980s, the Holmes house at number 52 was covered in aluminum siding, and a public housing complex sits across the road.

The 2009 city overview says the twentieth century brought single-family houses and public housing, with 900 units run by the Quincy Housing Authority. Census Tract 4178.02, the tract that contains Germantown, shows the result, though its edges may take in a few nearby streets. Its median building dates to 1954; 31.0% of units predate 1940, 28.7% went up in the 1970s, and 92.6% are older than 1980. Detached houses are 37.9% of units, three- and four-unit buildings 31.2%, and buildings of 50 or more units 16.1%. Owners occupy 42.4% of homes.

Three- and four-unit buildings

Nearly a third of the tract's units sit in buildings with three or four units. When several households share one building, the siding, porches and back stairs belong to all of them. A condo association votes on them, or, if the building is a rental, the landlord decides. Our Quincy condo painting page explains how shared-exterior projects get approved and insured.

Additions from three eras on one house

The Bicknell Street house shows how layers pile up: Federal clapboards, an 1880s gable, a 1910s porch. Each addition can have different wood, different joints and different paint history, so prep and primer have to suit each part of the house.

Aluminum siding over old clapboards

The documented Holmes house shows that metal siding is part of Germantown's housing record. Aluminum can be cleaned and painted with a coating made for metal. Before paying to paint it, check whether rot or trapped moisture underneath calls for removing it instead.

Marsh, bay and pre-1980 paint

Town River Bay forms the shoreline, with a broad salt marsh where Germantown meets Houghs Neck, and the 2019 hazard plan lists a Germantown seawall project. Because 92.6% of units here were built before 1980, assume that scraping old exterior paint calls for lead-safe methods unless the building is confirmed to date from 1978 or later; see our lead-safe painting page and our Quincy exterior painting page.