Longwood Painters — Between Beacon St and the Muddy River

David Sears and Amos A. Lawrence began developing the area in 1850, after the Brookline Branch Railroad arrived; that rail line now carries the MBTA along the Muddy River. By 1849 Sears had already planted 14,000 trees, and European beeches from that planting still shade Longwood Square.

The 1978 National Register nomination describes a ten-block district bounded by St. Mary's, Beacon, Kent and Chapel Streets, with a regular street pattern unlike most of Brookline. Single-family houses run through Mansard, Queen Anne, Shingle Style and Georgian Revival. On Monmouth Street and Monmouth Court, Lawrence built rows of attached houses in the 1870s with the Back Bay in mind, including George Putnam's 1876 Gothic Revival group with Gothic dormers and bargeboard trim. The oldest building, Aspinwall Cottage on Colchester Street, predates 1844.

Longwood is denser than its tree cover suggests. In Census Tract 4001, which includes Longwood Towers and the Monmouth, Hawes and Colchester Street addresses, only 7% of homes are detached houses, a third sit in five-to-nine-unit buildings, more than a fifth in buildings of 50 or more, and 63% are rented.

Mansard roofs and their trim

Mansard is one of the district’s major house styles, and 58 Monmouth Street, from the 1860s, pairs brick walls with a scallop-tiled mansard roof. On a roof like that the tiles are not paint work; the wood around them, such as dormer faces, cornices and trim, is, and reaching it means setting ladders or staging at roof height without stepping on the tile.

Attached rows

The Monmouth Street and Monmouth Court townhouses were built as rows, so each facade is one piece of a larger composition. When one house in a row is repainted and its neighbors are not, matching trim color, sash color and cornice lines to its neighbors keeps the row reading as one design, so it helps to talk with the adjoining owners before choosing colors.

Several materials on one block

The nomination lists stone, brick, shingle, stucco and wood as the district's main materials, often mixed within sight of each other. Wood clapboard and shingle take exterior paint or stain; stucco and painted masonry need breathable coatings; bare stone and unpainted brick are best left alone. The estimate should name each material and the coating planned for it.

Old paint in a pre-1980 tract

About 93% of homes in Tract 4001 were built before 1980. Paid work that disturbs more than 20 square feet of exterior paint, or 6 square feet in a room, in pre-1978 housing must follow the federal RRP rule. Our lead-safe painting page explains containment and cleanup.