North Quincy Painters — Atlantic and the North Quincy station area

According to a 2009 City of Quincy neighborhood description, North Quincy became residential later than much of the city because the Jockey Club of Boston ran a horse-racing track there around the turn of the 1800s; the open ground, then called Billings Plain, also served for militia training. Tract development on the flat terrain then produced a dense pattern of single-family lots in the early 1900s. The North Quincy Red Line station came in the 1970s.

Massachusetts Historical Commission forms for the Atlantic section add detail. The area was once known as 'the farms,' and developers platted it in the late 1800s after the Old Colony Railroad and the street railway arrived. In 1888–1889 agent Henry Hunt put more than three hundred house lots on the market for developer Charles F. Stratton. As in neighboring Montclair, Norfolk Downs and Wollaston, much of the building of modest suburban houses took place between 1900 and 1920.

The surviving examples the MHC recorded are wood. 99 East Squantum Street (1910) is a clapboarded Colonial Revival Four-Square built as a two-family; the form notes that the Four-Square was a frequent choice for two-family houses in 1910s Quincy. 101 Billings Road (about 1905) is a shingled Queen Anne on a street where many single-family houses were converted to multiple units. 249 East Squantum Street, a Federal farmhouse from about 1798, predates the subdivisions entirely. And 51 Hunt Street (1907) is a well-preserved three-decker; its form says two-family houses were the usual multi-family type in early-1900s Quincy and relatively few three-deckers went up.

Census tracts split the picture. Tract 4175.02, which holds Hunt Street in Atlantic, has a median building year of 1943, with 48.7% of units built in 1939 or earlier and 80.0% before 1980. Tract 4172.01, around the Red Line station, has a median of 1971 and 37.4% of its units in buildings of 50 or more.

Close-set houses on flat lots

The city describes the early-1900s lots as dense. When the gap to the next house is narrow, ladder placement, staging and overspray protection for a neighbor's car or siding become part of planning the job, and it helps to talk to the abutter before work begins.

Two-family houses with two owners' interests

The Four-Square two-family and the converted single-family are both documented here. When the units are held as a condo, or one floor is rented, exterior color and timing need agreement from both parties. Tenant-occupied units built before 1978 also bring owner duties under the Massachusetts Lead Law if a child under 6 lives there.

Shingles versus clapboards

Shingled Queen Annes like the one on Billings Road wear differently from clapboarded Four-Squares: shingles cup and split, and stained or painted shingle faces soak up more product. Clapboards show peeling at laps and sills first. Your Quincy exterior painting estimate should name the siding and the prep for it.

Four out of five units in the Hunt Street tract predate 1980

With 80.0% of units in Tract 4175.02 built before 1980, plan for possible lead paint on trim, windows and porches. Under the federal RRP rule, paid work on pre-1978 housing that disturbs more than 20 square feet outside or 6 square feet per room inside requires certified lead-safe practices; see our lead-safe painting page.