Brookline Village Painters — Washington & Harvard Streets

The village took shape around a stagecoach stop at Washington and Boylston Streets, where the Punch Bowl Tavern stood until it was torn down in 1833. Once the railroad cut through the southern end of the village in the 1840s, small shops opened between wood-frame houses, and the 1845 town hall on Washington Street made this the seat of local government.

The 1979 National Register nomination for the Brookline Village Commercial District counts 47 buildings along Washington Street from Route 9 to the town hall complex and up Harvard Street to Webster Place. Most date from the late 1800s or early 1900s and rise three or four stories, with stores at street level and offices or apartments overhead. Brick dominates, laid decoratively at cornices, over windows and between floors, and the Colonnade Buildings add mansard roofs and storefronts framed by cast-iron Corinthian columns.

Urban renewal later cleared two older residential areas beside that spine. A Brookline Historical Society caption records that the neighborhood south of Lower Washington Street, called the Farm, was razed in the early 1960s by the Brookline Redevelopment Authority, and that the Marsh to the north was cleared in stages into the early 1970s. In Census Tract 4009, which takes in Station Street, 38% of homes were built in the 1970s and just over half sit in buildings of 50 or more units.

Iron storefronts and decorative brick

Cast-iron storefront columns, sandstone lintels and, on the Brookline Trust building, an iron cornice added in 1902 are metal and stone, not wood, and they take different preparation: loose rust and failed coatings come off first, bare iron gets a primer made for metal, and painted masonry needs a coating that lets moisture out. With shops below and apartments above, one facade can serve a business and several households, so access and timing need agreement from each of them.

Harvard Avenue's local historic district

Just north of the village, Harvard Avenue was platted in 1843–44 and runs from a Greek Revival house of about 1847 through 1850s Italianates to a 1901 row of brick Georgian Revival town houses. It is one of Brookline's Local Historic Districts, where most changes to a building's exterior need Town review. Whether a new color by itself needs a certificate is something to confirm with Preservation staff before you pick a scheme.

Frame houses under later siding

The 1979 nomination describes three mid-1800s frame houses on Holden Street facing Town Hall, two of them already covered in aluminum, and the Harvard Avenue report notes a house of about 1855 heavily altered by siding and the loss of its porch. On houses like these the paintable work may be trim, porches, doors and window casings; uncovering original clapboard is a separate carpentry decision, not part of a repaint.

Paint that predates 1978

In Tract 4009, 92% of homes were built before 1980; in Tract 4007, which holds Town Hall and Harvard Avenue, the figure is 77%. Under the federal RRP rule, paid work that disturbs more than 6 square feet of paint per room inside, or 20 square feet outside, in pre-1978 housing calls for a certified firm and lead-safe practices. Our lead-safe painting page walks through what that looks like.