Weir Village Painters — Plain Street, Weir Street & the numbered streets

The settlement took shape at the Great Ware on the west bank of the Taunton River. The National Register nomination for Taunton describes long riverside strips given over to shipyards, iron foundries and brickmaking, crossed by numbered streets that soon filled with houses. In 1800, the nomination notes, coasting vessels were freighting three million bricks, 800 tons of ironware and 700 tons of nails out of Taunton each year. The village name refers to fishing weirs that caught herring in the river.

Housing growth during the 1864–1890 building boom was, in the nomination's words, nowhere "more pronounced than in Weir Village," where the numbered streets were densely built up with single-family Greek Revival cottages. Speculators also put up gable-fronted side-hall houses in large numbers; the Sylvanus N. Staples House at 21 Second Street is the example the nomination names.

Weir Village also stands out for masonry. Local merchant-seamen built brick and stone tenements to board sailors, which the nomination calls the city's first substantial multi-family housing, and the nomination notes that brick and stone from local yards and quarries went into even modest homes in this period. The Stone House at 15–17 Plain Street is one of several individually listed buildings here, along with the Capt. David Vickery House at 33 Plain, the H. B. Lothrop Store at 210 Weir and the Weir Engine House at 530 Weir.

In Census Tract 6140, which includes 21 Second Street and 530 Weir Street, 90.4% of the 2,084 housing units were built before 1980. Only 16.9% are detached single-family houses; 34.0% are in three- and four-unit buildings and 25.7% in two-unit buildings. Owners occupy 32.2% of the occupied homes. These are tract figures; the tract and the village do not have matching boundaries.

Tight lots shape exterior work

Cottages packed onto a grid leave little room between houses. Ladder and staging placement, protecting the neighbor's siding and car from drift, and getting permission to stand equipment on the next lot can decide how a side wall gets painted.

Masonry needs a different approach than wood

Brick and stone walls breathe differently from clapboard. Painted brick may be due for a breathable masonry coating, while unpainted stone is generally better left bare. Window trim and lintels set into masonry still get the usual scrape, prime and topcoat.

Greek Revival trim is broad and flat

Greek Revival houses typically show wide corner boards, a plain frieze band under the eaves and a strong gable end. They read best when the trim color is crisp and the edges are cut clean, so prep on those boards matters more than on the walls.

Two- to four-unit buildings dominate the tract

With six in ten of the tract's units in buildings of two to four apartments, a repaint here often involves an owner who lives on one floor and rents the others, or a landlord managing it from elsewhere. Shared porches and rear stairs belong in the scope from the start.