South Side Painters — Moody Street south, Ash, Adams, High, Wadsworth and Washington

Until 1849 this land belonged to Newton. Isaacson's history for the Waltham Historical Society describes it as a very rural part of Newton, with a few large, widely spaced farms, until the Newton Chymical Company opened off present-day Newton Street in 1824. Newton residents who worked for or lived near that company petitioned for annexation as early as 1844. After the Moody Street bridge went up in 1846, building spread from two centers, one along Newton Street and one along Moody.

The watch factory shaped what came next. The Waltham Improvement Company, a group mostly of local businessmen that bought the factory land, also developed the surrounding parcels and sold them for homes. John P. Noble, listed in the 1871 directory as a watch factory worker, lived in a house at today's 134 Ash Street that was probably built between 1868 and 1871 and still stands.

The 1880s brought more streets and more ornament. Edward P. Wadsworth may have laid out Wadsworth Avenue in 1886, while the first block of Washington Avenue was being divided at about the same time. In 1885 he sold the corner lot at 786 Moody Street to Aaron Martin, a watch factory machinist whose Queen Anne house is now on the National Register. At 215 Adams Street, the Lenoir Dow House of 1888, built to house watch company workers during the decade's building boom, has an asymmetrical front, a hip roof with iron cresting and a porch with ornate woodwork.

The Ash, Adams, Wadsworth and southern Moody Street addresses above all fall in Census Tract 3686, which does not cover the whole South Side but reflects that history in its numbers: 1,536 of 2,539 units date from 1939 or earlier, and 61.1% sit in buildings of two to four units. Only 3.2% were built in 2000 or later. Of the occupied units, 36.9% are owner-occupied and 63.1% rented.

Two-, three- and four-unit buildings

With 583 units in two-unit buildings and 968 in three- or four-unit buildings, 61.1% of units share their building with one to three other units. Scheduling has to account for every unit's doors, windows and porches, and where a building has stacked porches or back stairs, those add painted surfaces well beyond the siding.

Queen Anne trim and porches

Houses like the Dow and Martin houses carry the detail the 1880s favored: ornate porch woodwork, asymmetrical fronts and, on the Dow house, a hip roof with iron cresting. Each piece of porch trim has to be scraped and primed by hand, and choosing which pieces get accent colors changes the labor more than the paint does.

Generations of paint, likely including lead

In this tract, 86.1% of units were built in 1979 or earlier. Disturbing paint on a pre-1978 home falls under EPA lead-safe rules, which Massachusetts administers itself, so containment and cleanup are part of the job on both siding and interior trim. Our lead-safe painting page explains the steps.

Interiors in old two-families

Inside, units in these older houses can have original trim, doors and stair parts under many coats, and their walls may be plaster rather than drywall. Our interior painting page covers repairs and prep for that kind of surface.