If you see hummingbirds and colorful flowers rather than smoke emerging from a chimney on Almont Street in Mattapan, your eyes are not deceiving you. It’s chimney art, and it’s something the neighborhood hopes will take flight.

Homeowner Pam Leins says not a month goes by without someone ringing the doorbell at her Almont Street home to find out more and marvel at the unique five-year-old mural full of hummingbirds, trees, and flowers that decorates her otherwise typical chimney from top to bottom.

Rather than pay for a plain white paint job on the three-story, brick chimney – or stripping it to brick, Leins got in touch with an artist friend, Alvin ‘Acoma’ Colon, to give it a paint job few will forget.

What came out of that was a brilliant blue structure featuring four large hummingbirds, several trees, and some flowers native to Chile and Puerto Rico – all of which scale up to the top of the home in a way that is in harmony with the surrounding area.

“It was badly in need of painting,” said Leins, who is the director of the Boston Educational Development Fund. “Instead of just painting it white again, I envisioned something distinctively different from what it was. I’m a huge fan of murals and I don’t think there are enough in Boston even though the numbers have picked up. I decided that instead of having to travel somewhere else to see mural art, maybe I would just put one on my home and bring the art to me. The chimney seemed like the perfect place.

“Alvin got around to coming here after a few months, and he went outside and looked at it, and after a few seconds, he had this idea,” she said.
That idea was hummingbirds and trees, Colon said, but having only worked on traditional artwork and murals (he most recently was a featured artist on the Grove Hall Boston Black History mural in 2021), chimney art felt overwhelming.

“It took me a year and a half to really get to it because I had other work, but I was also a little intimidated because I had never done anything like this or on this scale,” he said. “I was thinking nature and I looked at the area with the park across the street and thought about how it would fit…I thought about trees and hummingbirds, and that’s what came out.”

Colon used an electronic lift to get to the top of the house, and after rolling a white base coat on the chimney, he used his mural spray equipment to create the artwork. It took about three days to complete, and he finished it almost five years ago. This summer, he said he intends to touch it up and add a few new elements to it.

But there’s more to the story. About a year ago ,he returned to Leins’s home and painted a companion mural in her basement, one that brightened up a laundry room and camouflaged a rusty old heating oil tank with brilliant blues, yellows, reds – and more hummingbirds.

“There’s definitely a unique story here,” Colon said. “I thought a lot of people might enjoy this, but I never thought it would get this kind of attention. We’re just laughing about it. I hope people can look at it and feel that maybe that kind of art would be nice on their home, too. It certainly brings up the spirits of everyone who sees it.”

The home has caught the attention recently of the Greater Mattapan Neighborhood Council (GMNC), whose members discussed the home and the chimney art at a recent meeting. All noted that it was a huge pick-me-up to come across something so unique and well done on something as common as a chimney – sparking interest from others about what the neighborhood would feel like if more people “beautified” their homes with art.

Leins said she hopes that Colon’s mural starts a trend, and she’s very comfortable with the many visitors she has inquiring about the mural. She said it makes a great “hidden gem” neighborhood in Mattapan even better. “It could help generate a lot of work for these artists, and people do like it. People ring my doorbell all the time and ask me about it and ask me for Alvin’s number…People know the house.

“When I tell people I live on Almont Street, they always ask me if I know about the chimney house. I always have to tell them, ‘That’s my house!’”