Belmont Center Painters — Pleasant Street, Concord Ave & Leonard Street

Belmont Center grew from a crossroads. In the early 1800s the Concord Turnpike, now Concord Avenue, met the colonial Watertown Road, now Pleasant Street, and the Fitchburg Railroad arrived in 1843. The town's 2014–2016 historic resources survey describes buildings here that track changing tastes from the late 19th century to the mid-20th: the 1881 brick Queen Anne Town Hall with terra cotta ornament, the 1902 Classical Revival library building, Georgian Revival police and light department buildings from the 1930s, and brick Colonial Revival store blocks on Leonard Street built in stages in 1936, 1941 and 1952.

A wood-frame shop at 46-48 Leonard Street, built around 1890, is the oldest surviving shop building on that street. Its first owners, the survey notes, were the Perault family, who were house painters.

Beyond those civic and commercial blocks, the housing varies by street. The Pleasant Street Historic District, listed on the National Register in 1979, is characterized by mid- to late-19th-century single-family houses, generally on large lots. Southeast of the center, the Belmont Park subdivision was mostly built out between 1894 and 1899 in Queen Anne, Shingle and Colonial Revival styles. South of the center, Clark Hill has architect-designed English Revival and Craftsman houses on landscaped lots with stone walls.

Census data for Tract 3578, which includes 631 Pleasant Street and the Leonard Street shops, shows a different side. Only 43.6% of its units date from 1939 or earlier, while 33% were built in the 1940s and 1950s, and 76.7% are single-family detached houses. So a 19th-century house and a postwar one can stand a short walk apart, and each calls for its own preparation.

Historic district certificates come first

Parts of the center fall in the Pleasant Street and Common Street local historic districts. Belmont's Historic District Commission issues a Certificate of Non-Applicability to repaint in the same color and requires a Certificate of Appropriateness to change it, for any exterior visible from a public way. The town suggests an informal meeting with the commission before applying, so build that time into the schedule.

Two eras, two kinds of prep

A Pleasant Street house from the 1800s can carry many coats of paint, and loose layers on its trim have to be scraped by hand before anything new goes on. A house from the 1940s or 1950s has a shorter paint history but still predates 1978, so lead-safe practices apply to both.

Stone walls and plantings on the hills

On Clark Hill, the town's survey describes spacious lots with extensive landscaping and stone walls. Drop cloths, ladder footing and keeping drips off fieldstone take more care on that kind of site than on a flat suburban lawn.