Grafton Hill Painters — East Side three-decker neighborhood

The National Register nomination for Worcester's three-deckers traces how this hill filled in. By 1890 one of the two main East Side clusters was centered on Grafton Hill's west slope, on the streets east of Water Street; the Bridget Shea Three-Decker at 21 Jefferson Street (c. 1888) is the example it cites. Through the 1890s building spread to Ingalls and Dorchester Streets and north across Grafton Street toward the bottom of Wall and Orient Streets, where the two Queen Anne houses of the Fay Street Historic District went up in 1896. After 1900 the work continued on Blanche and Mott Streets and moved east into new subdivisions between Dorchester and Grafton Streets. The last wave, in the 1920s, filled the neighborhood's northeastern corner, including the Colonial Revival rows of the Houghton Street Historic District.

The Grafton Street School at 311 Grafton Street records the change in brick. Its 1879 building was enlarged in 1897 and joined by a second building in 1899, expansions attributed to the area's shift from a suburban hillside to densely built triple-decker housing.

The nomination's citywide style sequence fits that timeline: Italianate and Stick details on buildings from before about 1895, Queen Anne shingled bays, brackets and turned porch posts from about 1890 to 1910, Colonial Revival after 1900, and Craftsman details in the late 1920s. Each era puts its trim, and its paint problems, in different places.

The same nomination is blunt about what happened next. Arson, vandalism and demolition took three-deckers on Grafton Hill at a rate it described as approaching epidemic proportions. Fay Street shows the pattern: when listed in 1990 its two houses still had turned balusters and bracketed eaves, and they have since been re-sided and given simpler porches. Expect a mix on any given block, with some buildings in original clapboard, some in aluminum or vinyl, and many with porches rebuilt or enclosed.

Three stories of wall and stacked porches

A full three-decker facade needs staging or lifts for the top floor and gable, and many buildings carry porches on more than one level. Porch ceilings, rails and posts weather faster than the walls and usually drive the scope. On re-sided buildings, the exposed wood is often limited to porches, window trim and eaves, which still need proper prep.

Mostly three- and four-unit buildings

Census Tract 7324, which takes in Jefferson, Ingalls, Blanche, Mott, Houghton and Dorchester Streets, has 67.1% of its housing units in buildings of three or four units, and about 29% of occupied units are owner-occupied. Painting one of these means coordinating access, porch use and window opening with every unit.

Lead is the default assumption

In that same tract about 74% of units were built before 1980, and 43% before 1940. On a building this age, any scraping of original clapboard, porch parts or window trim should be set up as lead-safe work with ground covers and cleanup, and units with young children carry Massachusetts Lead Law duties for the owner.

Fewer historic-district limits, but check listed buildings

Grafton Hill is not one of Worcester's four local historic districts, so paint color is up to the owner. Several buildings here are individually documented in the National Register three-decker nomination, though, and removing historic siding or porches on a listed building can trigger the city's one-year demolition delay. Checking MACRIS before a siding or porch change is worth the few minutes.