Sacred Heart Painters — Sacred Heart, Lowell

The neighborhood shares its name with Sacred Heart parish. An Archdiocese of Boston archivist, writing in The Pilot, records that in the early 1880s the archbishop gave the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate the task of forming it for a growing number of Catholic farmers and laborers in the south end. The lower church was dedicated in 1884 and the upper church in 1901. Its residential streets, she writes, were home mainly to poor laborers, many of them working at the nearby Lowell Bleachery, while much of the parish's land was cemeteries, vacant lots and railroad property.

A 1936 federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation survey, as transcribed by local historian Richard Howe, describes a section, labeled South Lowell/Sacred Heart in the transcription, as "commonly known as 'Swedish Village'" and built up mostly with small cottage-type homes.

The city's 2011 planning report places Sacred Heart in two census tracts. Tract 3122, which includes the 1000 block of Gorham Street, reads as a neighborhood of houses: 40.3% of its homes are single-family detached, 18.2% are attached single-families and 19.0% are in two-unit buildings, and 62.7% of occupied homes are owner-occupied. Almost half (45.9%) were built before 1940, and a later wave shows up too, with 230 homes from the 1990s.

Tract 3121, around Moore and Agawam streets, is more mixed. Its edge also takes in Watson Street, which UMass Lowell's Back Central Project treats as part of Back Central. About 46.8% of its homes predate 1940, yet 33.8% were built in 2000 or later, and 27.6% sit in buildings of 50 or more units.

Small houses, a lot of trim per square foot

A cottage-scale house has the same windows, doors, corner boards and eaves to prep as a bigger one, spread over less wall. That puts a larger share of the prep into scraping and priming trim, so an estimate should count openings, not just siding area. Our exterior painting in Lowell page describes the prep sequence.

Lead-era paint on original woodwork

Close to half of Tract 3122's homes were built before 1940, and original woodwork in a house that old can carry paint layers from before the 1978 lead ban. Where testing finds lead, prep switches to contained, lead-safe methods. See our lead-safe painting page for what containment and cleanup look like.

Two-families with two sets of needs

In a two-unit house, one side or floor may be owner-occupied and the other rented, and each unit can be on its own schedule. Interior work moves room by room in the occupied unit. The interior painting in Lowell page covers plaster repair and lead-safe prep inside older homes.

New buildings beside old ones in Tract 3121

Around Moore and Agawam streets, a third of homes (33.8%) date from 2000 or later and 27.6% sit in buildings of 50 or more units, while 46.8% predate 1940. A street there can pair a century-old wood house that needs lead testing with a recent building where any condo association sets the rules on what owners may paint. Our condo painting in Lowell page covers association approvals.