Quinsigamond Village Painters — Millbury Street valley, Worcester

The village sits in a narrow valley between two steep ridges cut by the Blackstone River. Ichabod Washburn started an iron rolling mill and wire factory here in the 1840s, later Washburn & Moen's South Works, and housing spread along Millbury Street to be near it. That history comes from the Quinsigamond Village walking tour published with the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor.

After 1870 the village became Worcester's 'Little Sweden.' By 1900, 79 percent of its nearly 3,000 residents were Swedish and 85 percent worked for the wire company. Owning property mattered to them: 30.4 percent of villagers owned homes by 1900, and the brochure describes three-deckers as their step up from rented tenements, with owners renting out spare space and putting the income toward the mortgage. Along the commercial stretch of Millbury Street, owners lived upstairs and ran a business below.

South Works, New England's last major steel mill, closed in 1977. The houses stayed. A federal survey of the city, the Worcester Multiple Resource Area nomination, already records large concentrations of three-deckers near Millbury Street and Quinsigamond Avenue before 1890.

Older cottages hidden among the three-deckers

A few single-family workers' homes survive, such as the Victorian double cottages at 841 to 847 Millbury Street, built 1875 to 1878, and the George Reeves House at 894 Millbury, built 1857 to 1862. Houses that age have had many coats over many decades. Expect thick, alligatored layers on trim and sash, and plan for scraping and spot priming before any finish coat.

Mixed-use buildings on Millbury Street

Flats above a storefront mean two different jobs on one facade: commercial ground-floor trim and signage areas, and residential clapboard or siding above. Access is often tighter here too, with sidewalks and business hours to work around.

More owner-occupied buildings than much of Worcester

The census tract that takes in Stebbins, Halmstad, Ekman and Greenwood Streets is close to half owner-occupied, and about a third of its units are single-family detached houses. Where an owner lives on one floor of a two- or three-family, one unit's interior can be repainted while the other flats stay occupied, since the owner controls keys and timing.

Lead in old coats, wear near grade

Nearly half the tract's housing was built in 1939 or earlier. Pre-1978 paint on porches, sills and clapboards should be treated as lead-containing until tested, and the lowest siding courses and porch skirts, close to grade, are usually the first places old paint lets go. See our lead-safe painting page for how disturbed paint is contained.