Dedham Village Painters — High Street, Court Street, Chestnut Street and Franklin Square

The Dedham Village Historic District joined the National Register in September 2006. Its nomination traces about a mile of High Street and half a mile of Court Street, bounded roughly by High, Court, Washington and School Streets, Village Avenue and Chestnut Street. The authors found Federal and Greek Revival design predominant, with Georgian, later 19th-century and Colonial Revival buildings mixed in. The building type they name as most common is the two- to two-and-a-half-story gabled house sheathed in clapboards.

The nomination notes that the courthouses, the registry of deeds, the library and two of the four churches are masonry, set against a residential fabric of clapboard. On most house lots, then, the siding, corner boards, cornices, shutters and window sash are all painted wood, and the exterior finish is doing real protective work.

Some streets have very specific histories. Around Franklin Square, Church Street and School Street, six early Federal houses built between 1798 and about 1819 share five-bay center-entrance fronts, louvered shutters, narrow clapboards and thin corner boards, on small lots close to the street. Chestnut Street was laid out in 1846, and the nomination classifies 13 of its 16 houses as Greek Revival. At Connecticut Corner, the 1798 and 1799 'Diamond houses' at 927 and 935 High Street have corner-entry facades and still hold original 9-over-6 wood sash.

Census Tract 4025, which includes Chestnut Street and the 600 block of High Street, is larger than the historic district and its figures show both layers: 35.6% of its units date from 1939 or earlier, yet 29.0% were built in 2000 or later, and 42.3% sit in buildings of five or more units.

Local historic district review

In 1975 Dedham created the Court Street–Franklin Square and Connecticut Corner local historic districts, both inside the National Register boundary, along with a Historic Districts Commission to regulate them. We could not confirm from a town document we were able to open how the commission treats paint, so ask it before any scope that changes colors, trim or materials.

Narrow clapboards and thin trim

Federal-era narrow clapboards and slim corner boards show every drip and heavy brush mark, and decades of built-up coatings can blur the profile. Prep on these houses is about removing failed paint without gouging soft old wood, then laying down coats thin enough to keep the lines crisp.

Original wood sash

Where houses keep early sash, as the two Connecticut Corner houses do, glazing putty, muntins and sills need hand work before paint. Replacing sash in a local district would raise its own review questions, so repairing and repainting it can be the simpler path.

Lead in old coatings

Paint on a house from the 1790s or 1840s has generations of layers below it, and anything applied before 1978 may contain lead. Scraping and sanding fall under federal lead-safe work rules; see our lead-safe painting page.