East Taunton Painters — Middleboro Avenue & Old Colony Avenue

Furnace Pond was a major source of bog iron found in the 1600s, and King's Furnace began operating in East Taunton in 1724, according to the National Register nomination for Taunton. A mill district formed along the Taunton River here in 1824. When rail lines arrived between 1835 and 1853, the area took on a second role as a railroad service community, and small railroad villages sprang up after the Civil War.

Two employers turned it into a larger industrial village. The Old Colony Iron Company started in the 1820s, though most of its surviving buildings date from 1893. The Corr Manufacturing Company opened on Middleboro Avenue in 1895, and the nomination calls the worker housing lining that avenue Taunton's last industrial "village." A fire station followed in 1899.

Census Tract 6141.02, which includes 616 Middleboro Avenue and 1 Old Colony Avenue, shows a mostly modern picture. Its median home dates from 1976. Of 2,664 units, 17.4% were built in 1939 or earlier and 55.7% before 1980. Single-family detached houses make up 76.7%, buildings of ten or more units hold 9.0%, and 86.7% of occupied homes are owner-occupied. The tract likely does not cover every part of East Taunton, so treat these as tract figures.

Late-1890s worker houses on Middleboro Avenue

The nomination describes Corr workers' housing lining the avenue, which dates the street to the 1890s plant or later. Houses that old usually carry many coats on the clapboards and should be presumed to have lead in the lower layers until tested; sills and door trim may need wood repair before primer will hold.

Farm-belt side-hall houses

The nomination cites the Enoch Williams House at 616 Middleboro Avenue as a side-hall house in Taunton's farm belt. That gable-front form puts the most visible trim on the street face: the entry surround, the cornice returns and the corner boards.

Houses from the 1980s and 1990s

Units from those two decades together make up 36.1% of the tract. On houses of that age, the work usually centers on fading and chalking siding, deck boards and trim around garage doors rather than paint buildup.

Listed buildings stand apart from the houses

The East Taunton Fire Station, the King Airfield Hangar and the Old Colony Iron Works–Nemasket Mills complex are individually listed. Listing on the National Register does not by itself regulate paint colors on neighboring private homes.