Greendale Painters — Greendale · Worcester

The federal Worcester Three-Deckers nomination traces Greendale's growth in stages. Three-deckers appeared in the southern part of the area between 1901 and 1910; from 1911 to 1920 new subdivisions pushed north on the east side of West Boylston Street; and infill continued through the 1920s. A large share of the people who lived in them, many of them Swedish, worked at the Norton Company, the abrasives maker that was one of Worcester's major employers. Four Greendale three-deckers on Fairhaven Road and Summerhill Avenue were listed on the National Register in 1990, and all housed Norton employees before 1930.

The nomination also notes that few unaltered three-deckers from Greendale's first decade survive. Later ones fared better. The Thomas Giguere Three-Decker at 18 Fairhaven Road, built around 1926, is described on its inventory form as remarkably well preserved: wood clapboard on the first story, wood shingle on the two above, a porch that rises to three tiers at the entry, triple columns, triple windows and a column of oriels on one side, plus a three-car garage out back.

On neighboring Indian Hill, beside Norton's Greendale plant, the company built its own housing. The Indian Hill–North Village, a National Register district, holds 94 houses the company put up during World War I, most of them one-and-a-half-story cottages with steep slate roofs, clapboard below and shingles above, and small lattice-supported entry porches. The nomination reports that most remain substantially unaltered.

In the census tract around Fairhaven Road, nearly half the homes date to 1939 or earlier and the median was built in 1943. About 29% of units are in three- or four-unit buildings and another 13% in two-families, yet close to 59% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, a higher share than Worcester as a whole.

Two siding materials on one wall

The documented Colonial Revival three-deckers here pair clapboard on the first floor with shingles higher up, and the Indian Hill cottages do the same. Shingles absorb and shed paint differently from clapboard, so a good job treats them as separate surfaces with their own prep and, sometimes, their own color.

Stacked porches are most of the labor

Three-tier porches with triple columns and balustrades mean a lot of turned and flat trim at height, plus ceilings and floors that wear faster than the walls. On a three-decker the porch stack can rival the siding in labor.

Rear garages count too

Multi-bay garages behind 1920s three-deckers, like the three-car garage at 18 Fairhaven Road, are easy to forget in a quote. Decide up front whether they are in scope so colors match across the lot.

Old wood, old paint

With almost half the homes built before 1940, original lead-based coats are likely under later layers. Scraping porches and sash on these buildings calls for containment and cleanup that meets EPA RRP rules; see our lead-safe painting page.