Bleachery Painters — River Street & Grove Street

Waltham Community Web places the Bleachery south of Grove Street and north of the river and River Street. There is no official boundary. The name comes from the Waltham Bleachery and Dye Works, which began operating in 1820 and closed in 1951 when Raytheon bought the site.

Two groups of Boston Manufacturing Company housing on River Street are on the National Register. At 153–155 and 163–165 River Street stand two 2½-story brick buildings from about 1870, with mansard roofs that give each a full third floor and segmental-arch window openings under brick hoods; 163–165 keeps its original slate. Farther east, 380–410 River Street is a pair of two-story rowhouses from the 1880s, one block of six wood-frame units and one of ten brick units, with paired entrances under bracketed hoods or porticos. The wood-frame worker housing behind the brick pair is described as heavily altered.

The census tract that covers these River Street and Grove Street addresses, Tract 3688, has 2,879 housing units. Its median year built is 1958, 31.3% of units predate 1940, and 19.4% went up between 2010 and 2019. Buildings of 50 or more units hold 27.6% of homes, single-family detached houses 22.4%, and two-family buildings 16.0%. Renters occupy 60.5% of the occupied units. The tract runs past the neighborhood, so treat these as a rough picture.

Brick walls, painted wood around them

On the brick buildings and the ten-unit brick block, the paintable parts are the windows, doors, entrance hoods, cornices and dormers. Brick that has never been coated is hard to return to bare once paint goes on, which is a reason to keep paint to the wood and metal.

Mansard roofs and slate

The c. 1870 brick pair puts their third-floor windows in a steep mansard. Reaching that trim means staging or lifts set so nobody walks or leans ladders on the roof, and on 163–165, where the original slate survives, broken slates are a real cost to avoid.

A row of units, more than one owner

Rowhouse blocks like 380–410 River Street read as one building from the street. When the units have separate owners, a single color scheme and a shared schedule keep the facade from ending up in patches; agreeing on that before the estimate saves a second site visit.

Apartment buildings in the tract

With nearly a fifth of Tract 3688's units built in the 2010s and over a quarter in buildings of 50+ units, a good share of requests here are likely to be interior: unit repaints, hallways and stairwells. Building managers may set work hours and ask for a certificate of insurance before a crew starts.