Auburndale Painters — Lasell neighborhood, Grove Street & Vista Avenue

As late as 1831, according to the National Register nomination, only seven families held title to all of Auburndale. A rail stop went in at the foot of Grove Street Hill in the 1840s and a first station in 1851, the same year the Auburndale Female Seminary, today Lasell University, was founded. Speculators bought land south of the tracks, and the Lasell Neighborhood district, bounded by Woodland Road, Studio Road, Aspen Avenue and Grove Street, still reads as the nomination put it: a middle-class railroad suburb with well-designed houses on ample lots.

The city's local historic district grew from that core and from the Auburndale Congregational Church. The city lists its prominent styles as Italianate, Second Empire, Shingle and Colonial Revival, with buildings dating from the late 1840s to the early 21st century, mostly on large suburban lots. Commonwealth Avenue was pushed west to the Charles River in 1895–97, opening more land for houses.

Census Tract 3748, which includes Vista Avenue, Grove Street and Hancock Street, has about 44% of its homes built before 1940 and 74% before 1980. About two-thirds are single-family detached, while almost a quarter sit in buildings of five or more units, so larger apartment buildings share the area with the older houses.

Mansard roofs and their dormers

Mansard houses such as 176 Grove Street, with paired brackets under a bellcast roof, and 222 Grove Street, whose dormers and bay carry scroll-sawn trim, mix steep roof planes with ornament. The dormer cheeks and window hoods sit right where roof runoff hits, so they often show the worst paint failure on the house. Flashing and gutters get checked before we paint over any of it.

Patterned slate is not a paint surface

A few houses near Lasell, including the Italian villa at 62 Vista Avenue, have polychrome slate roofs. Painters work right up against those roofs on eaves and dormers, and slate breaks under foot traffic, so access has to come from ladders and staging, never from walking the roof.

Clapboard and shingle on the same wall

Carter Hall, the seminary's 1882 Queen Anne building, pairs clapboards with patterned wood shingles, a mix common to that style. Each surface takes paint differently, and a color break at the transition line is common. Planning colors around that line is part of the estimate.

Stone houses with wood trim

The fieldstone cottage at 195 Woodland Road is one of the few 19th-century masonry houses in the village. On houses like it, only the wood trim is painted; the stone and granite quoins should stay bare.