West Quincy Painters — Copeland Street, Willard Street and the old quarry lands

The City of Quincy's own neighborhood guide names the granite industry as what drove growth in West and South Quincy. Quarrying took a lot of labor, drew immigrant workers, and many of those families stayed on after the industry's peak. A local-history lecture held by the Thomas Crane Public Library on the old Furnace Lands records that a large number of dwellings were built as homes for the men working the quarries and ledges, and that Irish immigrants settled here soon after quarrying began. Some of the main roads are older still: the county laid out Willard Street in 1835, Copeland Street followed in 1837, and the town accepted Furnace Avenue in 1868.

One of those workers' houses is documented in detail. The Massachusetts Historical Commission form for 23–25 Prout Street, dated to about the 1880s, sets it on "a densely settled street of late 19th century cottages in West Quincy." Barnabas Clarke, an investor in several granite firms, platted Prout Street and parts of Smith, Garfield, Dean and Clark streets in the 1870s; houses went up in the 1880s for workers at the nearby quarries, and Clarke rented this one to them. Surveyors classed it as a Quincy Cottage, the one-and-a-half-story gable-roofed type with twin dormers cutting through the eave, and it joined the National Register in 1989.

The census tract that takes in Copeland and Willard streets, 4182.01, shows a mixed stock. Its median building dates to 1963. About a quarter of units (26.5%) were built before 1940, yet 15.6% went up between 2000 and 2009. Detached single-family houses make up 38.6% of units, 38.7% sit in buildings of ten or more units, and owners occupy 49.5% of occupied homes. That tract does not cover all of West Quincy: 23 Prout Street falls in a neighboring tract, so treat these figures as one slice of the area rather than the whole of it.

Cottage detail means more edges

The Prout Street form lists saw-toothed shingles mixed with clapboards, shed-roofed dormers, pilasters framing the main block and brackets under the eaves. Each is its own surface to scrape, prime and cut in, and dormer sides catch runoff from the roof above. On a cottage like this, the trim and shingle bands can take more time than the plain wall area would suggest.

Pre-1980 housing and lead rules

In Tract 4182.01, 65.2% of units were built before 1980, close to Quincy's citywide 68.5%. Federal rules require certified firms using lead-safe practices when paid work disturbs paint in pre-1978 homes, and that applies to an 1880s cottage and a 1950s house alike. Our lead-safe painting page explains the setup.

Ground near Furnace Brook

Quincy's 2019 hazard plan follows Furnace Brook about four miles from the Blue Hills through West Quincy to Black's Creek, and flags land next to the brook as prone to frequent and at times intense flooding. On a house close to it, look at the bottom courses of siding, sill trim and basement-level paint for moisture before choosing a coating, because new paint will not hold over wood that stays wet.

Buildings with shared hallways

Close to four in ten units in the tract sit in buildings of ten or more apartments, and 18.9% are in buildings of 50 or more. In those buildings the hallways and stairwells are common areas controlled by the owner, the manager or, where the building is a condominium, the association, so a unit owner usually cannot authorize work there alone. See condo painting in Quincy for how that work is scoped.