South Framingham Painters — Downtown & Waverly Street

When the Boston and Worcester line was routed through the south side of town in 1833, commerce and industry followed the tracks instead of staying at the old Centre. More rail lines converged on South Framingham, and shoe, straw-hat and rubber-goods factories went up alongside two-story commercial blocks. Town Meeting itself moved here in 1891. Workers needed housing fast, and the city's 2016 preservation plan describes what was built: one-and-a-half-story end-gable cottages, larger company-owned multi-family buildings, and plain vernacular houses with some machine-cut Italianate trim.

A second wave came between 1900 and World War II, when Dennison Manufacturing employed a majority of the people living here. Blocks of Colonial Revival, Dutch Colonial and bungalow houses filled the streets north and south of Waverly Street. The Historical Commission's inventory records examples of each layer, from 1856 double houses on Proctor Street to the 1882 Willard Howe Tenement Block on Hollis Street.

Census data for the downtown tract that includes the Memorial Building on Concord Street puts the median build year at 1938, with just over half of homes dating from 1939 or earlier. About half of units there sit in buildings of five or more, and only about a quarter are owner-occupied, so paint decisions there more often fall to landlords and condo boards than to single-family owners.

Lead is the default assumption

With so much housing from before 1940, original lead-based paint is likely on trim, porches, window sashes and stair halls. Scraping and sanding here should follow lead-safe practices, with plastic containment and HEPA cleanup.

Porches and stacked decks on multi-families

Two- and three-family houses often have stacked porches front and back. Their floors, rails and ceilings weather faster than the siding, so a full exterior repaint usually includes porch floor coating and spot carpentry on balusters and posts.

Occupied units and common halls

Painting a building where several households live means scheduling around tenants, giving notice, and keeping egress clear. Shared front halls and stairwells take the most wear and usually show it before the private units do. Our condo painting page covers association work.

Historic downtown blocks

Concord Square and Irving Square are National Register districts, and the 1884 H. H. Richardson station on Waverly Street has its own local historic district. Painting there is still maintenance, but its stone walls fall under the rule that unpainted masonry stays unpainted.