Needham Center Painters — Great Plain Avenue, Maple Street & Fair Oaks Park

The Charles River Branch Railroad reached this part of town on June 1, 1853, and stopped at a station called Great Plain. By 1879 Great Plain Village had become the town center, and the depot's name shifted from Great Plain to Needham Plain and then simply Needham. When the wooden station burned in 1887 it was rebuilt in stone; one corner of that building survives inside a restaurant. Town Hall followed in 1902–03, and it and the common in front of it are listed on the National Register.

The Massachusetts Historical Commission inventory shows what was built in the decades after the trains came. Within about half a mile of the station sit Italianate houses at 1167, 1189 and 1197 Great Plain Avenue (1875–76), a Second Empire house at 1175, and a run of Maple Street homes dated 1855 to 1887 in Italianate, Second Empire and Queen Anne styles. Downtown, the 1891 Tilton-Ingols Block on Chapel Street served at various times as a hotel, boarding house and apartments; the 1887 Kingsbury Block on Great Plain Avenue is marked demolished.

Census Tract 4572, which holds Town Hall and the station, counts 2,192 homes. About 19% were built before 1940 and 76% before 1980, with the 1950s alone accounting for 28%. Single-family detached houses make up 76.6% of the stock, and 14.2% of units sit in buildings of five or more units, a reminder that apartments and mixed-use blocks are part of the center.

Bracketed eaves on 1870s houses

The Italianate style, recorded for three 1870s houses on the 1100 block of Great Plain Avenue, typically puts deep overhangs on brackets. Each bracket has end grain and joints that hold water, and paint tends to fail there first. Loose or split brackets can usually be glued, filled with epoxy and primed rather than replaced, which keeps the original profile.

Second Empire roofs above painted walls

Second Empire houses, the style the inventory lists for 74 Maple Street and 1175 Great Plain Avenue, are built around a mansard roof whose steep lower slope often holds dormers. Dormer trim and cornices sit in the path of runoff, so wood there gets a close look for rot before any coat goes on, and staging rather than roof walking is the usual access.

Queen Anne and Colonial Revival on Fair Oaks Park

The inventory lists an 1894 Queen Anne at 143 Fair Oaks Park and a 1910 Colonial Revival at 144. Queen Anne houses were often built with turned porch posts and spindlework and can carry a three- or four-color scheme; a Colonial Revival usually reads best with one body color and white or cream trim.

Mixed-use buildings downtown

The Center Business District and its overlay allow commercial and residential uses in one building. Storefront trim, upper-floor apartments and shared stairwells mean painting has to work around business hours, tenants and sometimes a condo association's rules.