Wollaston Painters — Wollaston Hill, Grandview Avenue & Beale Street

In 1869 the Wollaston Land Associates bought a 300-acre tract of farmland and began selling house lots on Wollaston Hill to affluent Quincy businessmen and Boston commuters. Their manager, George F. Pinkham, got the Old Colony Railroad to hand anyone who bought a lot a free pass good for three years. According to the Massachusetts Historical Commission forms filed by the Quincy Historical Commission, building went quickly and most houses in Wollaston Heights were up by 1900. The same forms call it Quincy's first affluent suburban neighborhood.

Several of those houses joined the National Register in 1989. Pinkham's own family house at 79 Winthrop Avenue, from about the 1870s, is described as the best surviving Second Empire house in Quincy: clapboard walls, a concave mansard roof with decorated dormers, two-story bays and big corner quoins. On Grandview Avenue the style turns to Queen Anne and Shingle Style. The 1887 David L. Jewell House at No. 48 uses one shingle pattern in its nested gables, another in the overhangs and a third on its round tower, and No. 94 has a corner tower, a Palladian window in the gable and a porch on paired columns.

Census figures back up the age. In Tract 4171, which contains Winthrop Avenue, Grandview Avenue and the Beale Street fire station, the median building dates to 1938, 55.4% of units were built before 1940, and just over half are detached single-family houses. Across the tracks, Tract 4176.01 around the Wollaston Red Line stop is older still on paper, at 61.0% pre-1940, and a quarter of its units sit in two-unit buildings. The City's neighborhood description notes apartment buildings near the Red Line as well.

Patterned shingles take patience

Where a single wall mixes fish-scale, staggered and straight-butt shingles, each course has its own shadow lines and undersides to brush. Spray alone can leave those bottom edges thin, so brushing or back-brushing each band is the more reliable finish. A loose or split shingle is replaced before priming, cut to the pattern it sits in.

Mansard roofs and dormers

On a Second Empire house the painted dormer cheeks, cornices and brackets sit on a steep roof plane. Reaching them means staging or a lift, and the flashing where dormers meet slate or shingle roofing is checked before the trim is painted so water isn't sealed in behind fresh paint.

Paint history on pre-1940 walls

With 55.4% of units on the hill and 61.0% near the station built before 1940, older coats on these houses can contain lead. Sanding, scraping or heat work in a pre-1978 home falls under federal and Massachusetts lead-safe rules, outside and in.

Two-family houses by the station

In Tract 4176.01, 25.9% of units are in two-unit buildings. When two owners or an owner and tenant share a house, it helps to agree on colors, porch work and scheduling before anyone signs, since one exterior covers both units.