West Lynn Painters — Western Avenue, Boston Street & the River Works side of town

The Massachusetts Historical Commission's survey of Lynn describes a plain house type repeated across the city after the Civil War: a side-hall house with simple Queen Anne porch and shingle details. It names the fringes of West Lynn as one of the places where well-preserved streets of them survive, often built as two-families. Before World War I, rising density brought flat-roofed three-deckers in the 'Boston style', often as corner store blocks at major intersections along the Western Avenue and Boston Street carlines. MHC adds that two-families and three-deckers kept filling empty lots here until the Depression stopped building.

Industry shaped all of it. MHC describes the GE River Works on Western Avenue as a long run of intact shop buildings where jet engines were made during World War II, and counts three separate GE complexes in the West Lynn area by 1955. Boston College's Global Boston project says that by 1930 the West Lynn plant employed more Lynn workers than the shoe trade, and that immigrant families moving out of the crowded Brickyard settled here and in the Highlands.

Census data for two tracts on this side of the city bear that history out. In the tract around Boston and River Streets, 814 of 1,224 housing units were built in 1939 or earlier. In the tract along Summer Street west of Neptune Boulevard, 43.5% of units sit in three- or four-unit buildings and another 22.4% in two-unit houses.

Two front doors, two porches, one paint job

Where a side-hall two-family has a porch on each floor, the posts, balusters, porch floors and shingle work add a lot of trim to scrape and prime, and they deserve a close look when planning an exterior job in Lynn. If the owners of each floor are different people, agree on one color scheme and one schedule before staging goes up.

Flat-roofed three-deckers and storefront corners

On a flat-roofed three-decker, the roofline trim and top-floor siding sit three stories up, so staging or lift access shapes the schedule. On a corner block with a shop below, the storefront trim, signage and sidewalk access all need to be planned around business hours.

Older houses than the streetscape suggests

MHC records Federal-period houses still standing along Boston Street near the Saugus River Bridge, and describes Lynn's surviving Federal houses as plain, central-entry plans with rear ells. A house that old has had two centuries of repainting, so a few paint-chip tests before any scraping show what the layers contain.

Lead is the default assumption

With 66.5% and 59.0% of units in the two tracts above built before 1940, treat porch floors, sashes and trim as lead-painted until tested. Rented floors add notice and containment steps for the units still occupied; see lead-safe painting.