Magoun Square Painters — Broadway & Medford Street

The square takes its name from the family of John Calvin Magoun (1797–1882), a town assessor and militia captain whose farm lay between Broadway and Vernon Street. The family lived in the Adams-Magoun House at 438 Broadway, built around 1783 and listed on the National Register in 1989. It is a 2½-story, five-bay clapboarded Federal house with a center entrance framed by pilasters, a half-round transom and a pediment, and it is one of the few 18th-century buildings left in Somerville.

The city's National Register list files that house under Winter Hill, and gives the Magoun Square label to two other 1989 listings: the Amos Keyes House at 12 Adams Street and a house at 25 Clyde Street. The square itself sits between Ball Square and Winter Hill, and a Green Line station named for it, south of the square on Lowell Street, opened on December 12, 2022, as part of the Medford branch.

Census Tract 3503, which contains the square and Clyde Street, has a younger housing mix than the city as a whole. Of its 1,484 units, 41.8% were built in 1939 or earlier, below the citywide 59.0%, while 24.3% were built in 2010 or later. Single detached houses make up 23.2% of units, more than double the city share, and 33.8% are in buildings of five or more units.

Two very different kinds of exterior

A pre-1940 wood house and a building finished after 2010 call for different prep. The older one needs scraping, sanding and spot priming under lead-safe rules; if newer siding is fiber cement or factory-primed, it mostly needs cleaning, caulk checks and a compatible topcoat. Knowing which you have, and what the manufacturer specifies, comes first.

Federal-era detail is flat and exposed

A Federal entrance like the one at 438 Broadway, with pilasters, a fanlight-style transom and a pediment, has few deep shadows to hide brush marks or failing paint. Thin, even coats and careful filling of old checks in the wood matter more there than on a busier Victorian facade.

Single-family houses alongside apartments

With nearly a quarter of tract units in detached houses and about a third in five-plus buildings, the same few blocks can hold an owner painting a whole house and an association planning common-area work. Our condo painting page covers the second case.

Storefronts on the square

The square is a mixed-use business district with homes on the streets around it. Painting a building that fronts Broadway or Medford Street means working around business hours and keeping the sidewalk passable.