Norwood Center Painters — Town Square, Day & East Cottage Streets

Before South Dedham became the town of Norwood in 1872, there was no square at all, only small streets, shops and houses clustered around Market Street, today's Central Street. The Common that now anchors downtown is bounded by four roads: Nahatan, Washington, Cottage and Central. Its civic buildings came in a short burst. The Memorial Municipal Building, designed by William Upham, had its cornerstone laid in November 1927 and was dedicated on November 11, 1928; the Civic Center followed in 1930. The commercial stretch of Cottage Street on the square's south side also dates to the 1920s, while Cottage Street across Washington Street stays mostly residential.

The town's 1876 map, as the Norwood Historical Society reads it, already showed the center taking shape along Washington and Nahatan Streets, with modest cottages on Nahatan and middle- and upper-class homes on the west side of Washington Street. Nahatan itself was laid out in the early 1800s as the road from Medfield to South Dedham.

Census figures give a sense of what stands now, though no tract lines up with the square. Tract 4134.01, which takes in East Cottage Street and Day Street, has a median year built of 1942, and 48.9% of its 1,698 housing units date from 1939 or earlier. In the same tract, 37.2% of units are in two-, three- and four-unit buildings. The Town Hall itself falls in a different tract, 4132.01, and Nahatan Street in a third.

Nearly half the units predate 1940

With 831 of 1,698 units in Tract 4134.01 built before 1940, plan on lead-based paint being somewhere under the newer coats until a test rules it out. Federal and Massachusetts rules require certified renovators and dust containment when painted surfaces are disturbed in pre-1978 homes. Our lead-safe painting page covers what that prep looks like.

Two- to four-family buildings

Of the tract's units, 248 are in two-unit buildings and 383 in three- or four-unit buildings. Painting one of these means several entrances, porches and stairwells, and co-owners or tenants (44% of the tract's occupied units are rented) who need notice about access and drying times. Shared exteriors are best scoped as a whole, so one side of a building doesn't end up a different age of paint than the rest.

Close quarters near the square

A downtown with the theater, restaurants, churches and town offices around it means street parking and foot traffic. Ladder placement, drop cloths over walkways and where a crew can park are things to settle during the estimate visit, not on the first morning.

Day Street's National Register house

The F. Holland Day House at 93 Day Street, home of the Norwood Historical Society, was built in 1859 in the Second Empire style and remodeled in the Tudor Revival style in 1890–92. The National Register listings for Norfolk County show only one other Norwood property, the Town Hall. Paint on 19th-century trim like this is handled with hand scraping, wet methods and spot priming rather than dry power sanding.