The Acre Painters — Adams, Marion, Lagrange & Suffolk Streets

A 1980 research report prepared for the Lowell Cultural Resources Inventory splits the Acre's housing into periods. Between 1840 and 1860 builders put up plain wood-frame houses with a little Greek Revival dress: door surrounds that hint at pilasters, paneled corner boards and a wide frieze board under the eaves. Some were one-and-a-half-story cottages with the gable facing the street, like 77 Adams Street; others held two or more units side by side, like 51 Marion Street.

After Broadway was pushed through in 1861–64, the 1870s brought large Second Empire multi-family buildings on or near it, with mansard roofs, bracketed eaves, bracketed door hoods and projecting window heads. From the 1890s to a peak around 1910, many early lots were cleared for three-story tenements. The report calls the c. 1910 version the Lowell Triple Decker: symmetrical bays or oriels with recessed porches between them, bays often trimmed with shingle skirts or paneling, porches with turned posts and cut-out balusters, and a broad cornice whose corners over the bays are frequently finished with right-angle brackets and drops.

The same report found little new building between 1920 and its 1980 writing apart from the North Common housing project. A 1980 state survey form describes it as eleven three-story, flat-roofed brick buildings with 536 apartments on 13.5 acres, built in 1937–41 on land that had been the heart of the Greek community. In the census tract that includes 77 Adams Street, 50.1% of the 1,100 housing units date from 1939 or earlier and 17.9% of occupied units are owner-occupied, so in that tract more than four in five households rent the unit they live in.

Exterior work is reviewed here

Inside the Acre Neighborhood District, erecting, demolishing or altering any exterior feature needs Lowell Historic Board approval before work starts. Replacing a porch post, a bay skirt or a run of clapboard reads as an alteration under that wording. The city doesn't say whether a same-color repaint does, and tells owners to ask Historic Board staff first.

Triple-decker cornices and bays

On the c. 1910 buildings much of the detail sits up high: the cornice brackets and drops, the bay paneling and the upper porch ceilings. Those parts need staging or a lift, and each bracket has end grain that takes primer separately from the flat boards around it.

Thin Greek Revival trim on the oldest houses

The 1840s–50s cottages carry their style in a few flat boards: corner pilasters, a frieze and a simple door surround. Losing one of those to rot erases much of the period character, so repairing and priming them keeps what wrapping them in new material would hide.

Tight setbacks

Nineteenth-century deed restrictions set setbacks street by street, partly to leave room for sidewalks: 8 feet on Marion Street and 5 on Lagrange, per the 1980 report. With a three-story facade that close to the street, there is little room for ladders and staging, which shapes how a job is set up and how passersby are protected.

Old paint on many surfaces

With half the tract's units built before 1940 and 67.1% before 1980, porch rails, sash and trim can hold lead paint, and dust from scraping travels between units in a multi-family building. See our lead-safe painting page.