Needham Heights Painters — Highland Avenue, Mark Lee Road & Rosemary Street

A station called Highlandville opened around 1860 on the rail line that had reached town seven years earlier. William Carter started his knitting company here in 1865, and the state inventory records both the Carter clothing company complex and an 1893 silk knitting mill on Thorpe Road. In 1907 the post office took the name Needham Heights; Needham Highlands was turned down because it sounded too much like Newton Highlands, and the station was renamed the same year.

Several houses tied to that era are on the state historic inventory. The Sarah Avery House at 797 Highland Avenue is an 1868 Italianate; nearby, the Horace A. Carter House at 790 Highland Avenue is an 1895 Queen Anne. On Mark Lee Road, the 1903 William Carter House is Shingle Style, and its neighbor at number 44 is an 1898 Queen Anne. Mercer Road and Pershing Road each have an 1870 Second Empire house, the Pershing Road one (the Charles Twigg House) recorded with multi-family use.

Census Tract 4035.01, which holds the Heights station, stands apart from the town figures. Its median home was built in 2001, against 1965 townwide; 40% of its 1,506 units date from 2010–19, and 51% sit in buildings of five or more units, 716 of them in buildings of 50 or more. Only 44.5% of homes are owner-occupied. The same tract still has 283 units built before 1940, so pre-1940 houses share the tract with large multi-unit buildings.

The Kingsbury house is a local historic district

The Jonathan Kingsbury House at 3 Rosemary Street, built in 1779, is a one-parcel local historic district; the state inventory records its designation in October 2025. The study committee called it the oldest standing house in the Heights. The draft by-law in that report excludes paint color from the commission's review but covers changes in exterior design or materials visible from a public way. We have not reviewed the final adopted text, so the owner should confirm with the commission before work beyond repainting.

Shingle Style walls need a different finish plan

Shingle Style, the style recorded for the 1903 Carter house on Mark Lee Road, typically means walls sheathed in wood shingles rather than clapboard. Shingles may be stained or painted, and switching from one to the other is hard to undo. Knowing which finish is on the wall now decides the prep, the product and how long the coating will last.

Multi-family houses with more than one owner

An 1870 house with multi-family use, like the one on Pershing Road, may be owned as one building or split into condos. When it is split, both owners or the association need to agree on colors, scope and timing before an exterior job can be scheduled.

Apartment buildings and common areas

With half the tract's units in buildings of five or more units, a good deal of the painting work is interior: hallways, stairwells and individual units. That work runs on a manager's schedule, and a property manager may ask for a certificate of insurance before work starts.