Bell Rock Painters — Around Bell Rock Memorial Park and the 1649 burying ground

The name comes from the rock where, in 1658, a bell was hung on scaffolding to call people to worship. The land around it stayed pasture until the city acquired it in 1904, and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. designed what became the 3.41-acre Bell Rock Memorial Park, now on the National Register. Bell Rock Cemetery, on Medford and Green streets, dates to 1649, holds a gravestone from 1670, and was listed on the Register in 1981.

Most of the housing came much later. Malden's 2016–2017 historic inventory says the Elisha S. Converse estate, south and east of the cemetery, was cut up for house lots by the 1890s. In 1943 Karl V. Wolsey's development firm built Regent Gardens on part of it: ten two-story buildings on Newman Road between Bell Rock Street and Green Street, built under Federal Housing Administration guidelines during the war. One block east, his Regent Park (begun 1942) added 132 five-room apartments in wood-frame four-unit buildings.

Census Tract 3414, which takes in the park, the cemetery and Newman Road, counts 2,689 housing units. Of those, 40.9% were built in 1939 or earlier and another 14.7% in the 1940s, nearly three times the citywide 1940s share of 5.0%. The mix runs from detached houses (27.2%) and two-family buildings (25.5%) to 3–4 unit buildings (16.8%), and owners occupy 52.8% of homes, a higher rate than Malden's 41.3%.

Brick walls, wood details

The inventory describes the Newman Road walls by their brick colors, red veneer with buff accents, so the surfaces that take paint are the wood ones: ribbed triglyph trim along the rooflines, keystone surrounds at some doors and a handful of original ribbed wood doors. The inventory also notes a few surviving 2-over-2 wood windows among mostly vinyl replacements, and shed-roofed porches clad in vinyl from the late 20th century.

Association decisions

Regent Gardens has been the Village Green at Malden condominiums since 1980, so choices about the shared exterior, including that wood trim, generally rest with the association rather than with a single unit owner. See our condo painting page for Malden for how scope and insurance paperwork usually come together.

Lead in a pre-1980 tract

In this tract, 86.1% of units were built before 1980. Federal rules require certified, lead-safe methods when paint is disturbed in pre-1978 housing, whether that means scraping a porch ceiling or sanding a window stool. Malden's Lead and Healthy Homes Program offers forgivable loans to income-eligible owners for lead hazard work, including exterior repainting; our lead-safe painting page explains the work practices.

Two-families and attached homes

With a quarter of units in two-family buildings and 13.2% in attached single-family homes, a job can mean coordinating with a second household on another floor or across a shared wall, and on an attached house the neighbor's paint ends a few inches from yours.