Jason Heights Painters — Jason Street, Irving Street & Ravine Street

Jason Heights has no official map line. The documented part of it is the Jason Street corridor and the cross streets around it. When the Massachusetts Historical Commission surveyed this ground in 1985 to enlarge the Arlington Center National Register district, it singled out the "elite Victorian residential structures in the Jason Street/Pleasant Street neighborhood" and called the houses south of Mass. Ave., for the most part, large and well-preserved. The nomination says the neighborhood housed both people who worked in the nearby business district and commuters riding Mass. Ave. into Boston.

The street's district data sheet reads like a style catalog. Shingle Style houses stand at 36, 46, 50, 56 (1894) and 59 Jason; Queen Anne at 16, 35, 37–39 and 45; Colonial Revival at 23, 26–28, 30–32, 34, 40 and up to 90 and 96. The William S. Wood House at 27 Jason (1903) has a semicircular entrance porch with paired Corinthian columns and an urn-topped balustrade. At the foot of the hill, the c. 1740 Jason Russell House at 7 Jason is the oldest building in the whole district.

Local oversight splits partway up the hill. The town's Historic Structures Inventory lists 51 addresses in the Jason/Gray local historic district, covering most of Jason Street from no. 6 to no. 72, plus Jason Court, Ravine Street, parts of Irving and Gray Streets, and two Mass. Ave. lots. Above no. 72, Jason Street houses such as 75, 84, 90 and 96 are on the same inventory under the Arlington Historical Commission instead.

District review, but not of color

For addresses in the Jason/Gray district, the Historic District Commissions review most exterior design changes, including removal or alteration of trim. Paint color is not reviewed, and exact like-for-like repairs get a Certificate of Non-Applicability. A repaint in new colors is your choice; swapping a rotted cornice for a simplified profile is not.

Shingle walls and layered trim

The nomination calls 24 Irving Street (1901) a Shingle style cottage with a balcony tucked into its shed roof, and 48 Irving's c. 1870 Second Empire cottage mixes hexagonal and rectangular shingles with Stick style panels and a spindled porch. Each shingle course has its own exposed butt edge, so prep on a patterned wall is slower and more detailed than on a run of flat clapboard.

Columns, balustrades and porches

On a Colonial Revival entry like the one at 27 Jason, the flat and upward-facing parts (column bases, balustrade caps, porch floors) are where to look first for soft wood and failed paint. In the district, exposed porch and step parts must be finish-grade wood such as fir, cedar or mahogany, so a replaced board gets primed and painted to match rather than swapped for composite.

Ravines and perched lots

The 1985 survey describes rocky pastures and ravines that early owners shaped into sloping lawns, and a town district report describes the shingled Queen Anne at 51 Academy Street, set high above that street and reachable by a steep stairway. Grade changes like these decide where ladders and staging can stand before any paint is opened.