Downtown Reading Painters — The Common, Main & Haven Streets

The National Register nomination for Reading's historic resources tells a blunt story about the business district. Demand for modern commercial space, it says, contributed to the loss of nearly all pre-20th-century buildings there, and it judged the materials and construction on Main Street, particularly since the 1950s, inferior to what is found elsewhere in town. The survivor it singles out is the Masonic Block at Main and Haven, a three-story brick building of about 1894 with ornamental brickwork and granite lintels above an altered ground floor.

On the Common itself, the main civic buildings date from the 1910s. The 1817 meetinghouse burned in 1911 and was rebuilt in 1913 from measured drawings, and the Georgian Revival library and town hall, which the nomination credits to local architect Willard P. Adden, went up in 1917–1918. A short walk west on Lincoln Street, the depot of about 1870 is low and wood-framed, with Stick and Queen Anne details and a deep cornice resting on chamfered knee braces.

East of Main, Haven Street keeps a run of 1880s wood housing. The nomination calls the Edward Manning Rowhouses at 256–274 Haven (about 1886) an excellently preserved and locally rare rowhouse, and it describes 316 Haven (about 1881) as a cottage with basket-handle porch arches, a stickwork gable screen and several shingle patterns.

The 40R Downtown Smart Growth District has added another layer. A 2022 town presentation counted about 48 acres and 148 lots in the overlay and listed projects such as 30 Haven, The Postmark and Rise475, the densest at 75.6 units per acre. Census Tract 3342, the tract west of Main that includes Town Hall and 30 Haven, puts 26.4% of its housing units in buildings of five or more, and renters occupy 31.9% of its occupied homes.

Patterned shingles and porch millwork

Houses like 316 Haven mix shingle shapes in bands and carry arched porch trim. Each pattern change is another edge where paint can fail, and scraping has to follow the shingle shape rather than run across it. Matching a profile before replacing a broken piece keeps the pattern readable.

High brick foundations

The nomination notes that every Stick-style Queen Anne building in Reading sits on a high brick foundation. That puts the lowest siding course farther from the soil, but it also leaves a tall band of masonry to protect from drips and overspray, and brick that was never painted is best left that way.

Pre-1980 housing on both sides of Main

In Tract 3342, 57.8% of homes date to 1939 or earlier and 90.4% predate 1980. The tract east of Main, 3344, is younger, with 25.0% from 1939 or earlier, yet 78.7% still predate 1980. Either way, lead-safe methods are the starting assumption on trim, sash and porches.

Units in buildings with managers

For a unit in one of the 40R buildings or an older apartment block, ask whoever manages the building about work hours, elevator use and contractor insurance, and get the answers in writing before work is scheduled.