Webster Square Painters — Main Street at Park Avenue, Worcester

Main Street, Park Avenue and Webster Street come together at the square, and the Middle River flows east from it. Factories followed the water and the rail lines: the city's Multiple Resource Area nomination to the National Register records major industrial growth near the square along Cambridge Street and Webster Avenue between 1890 and 1917, and notes that many factories from 1890 to 1930 still stand nearby.

Housing came with the jobs. The same survey says whole new neighborhoods of three-deckers were built near Webster Square and Park Avenue in that period. Today the square sits where three census tracts meet, and they look nothing alike.

On the Curtis Pond side, the tract that includes Webster Street and Curtis Street along Curtis Pond is roughly half single-family detached houses, nearly two-thirds owner-occupied, with a median build year of 1938. Up Main Street toward downtown, the tract containing 1050 Main Street has almost 38 percent of its units in three- and four-unit buildings, only about one household in nine owning, and 545 units in buildings of 50 or more; the Worcester Housing Authority's Webster Square Towers West is next door at 1060 Main. In the tract along Park Avenue, the median build year jumps to 1967.

Pre-war single-family streets around Curtis Pond

Around Curtis Pond the typical job is a detached, owner-occupied house built before the Second World War. Where wood clapboard or shingle survives under decades of paint, the job is a full-body exterior repaint with real prep, not a trim touch-up; where a house has been re-sided, the porch and trim are what remain to paint.

Stacked flats up Main Street

In the Main Street tract the stock is three-deckers and apartment blocks, mostly rented. Exterior work is height work, with staging or lifts, and interior repaints tend to happen between tenancies. Common hallways and stairwells in two- and three-family buildings get scuffed fast and are a frequent separate scope.

Postwar houses along Park Avenue

With a median build year in the late 1960s, the Park Avenue side has more homes from the 1950s through the 1970s. Many still fall before 1978, so lead rules can apply, but the surfaces are usually different from a 1900s three-decker, with drywall more common than plaster inside. See lead-safe painting for what the federal rule requires.

Traffic and parking on the main roads

Houses fronting Main Street or Park Avenue sit on heavy commercial corridors. Plan for where a lift or ladder rack can park, and expect road grime on street-facing walls that needs washing before any coating will bond.