Wellington Painters — Wellington Farms and the station towers

The Historical Commission calls Wellington the city's smallest neighborhood. Water bounds it on three sides: the Mystic River, the Malden River and a small creek. More than half of it began as flood plain, much of it filled in the mid-20th century. The Wellington family platted a grid of numbered streets on the higher ground in the mid-1800s, but building was slow. About 40 buildings, many Victorian Gothic, stood there in 1889, and the count had nearly doubled by 1900 with Queen Anne and Shingle-style houses. The grid was nearly full by 1936.

The survey names one house type as Wellington's signature: the four-square Craftsman. It has a rock-faced concrete block basement, wood shingle walls, multi-paned windows grouped in pairs and threes, and a hipped roof with deep eaves, closed soffits and a central dormer, with a wide porch across the front. A 1912 subdivision put a row of identical hipped-roof single-family houses on Second Street and larger two-families on Third and Fourth. A 1931 plan filled Seventh Street with two-families whose front gables carry a gambrel-shaped pediment.

Census tracts show the split clearly. Tract 3398.04, around Second through Fifth streets, is mostly older housing: 52.0% of units were built before 1940 and 43.4% are in two-unit buildings. Tract 3398.03 includes addresses on Sixth through Ninth streets, but its numbers reflect the large buildings near Station Landing and the T stop: 77.0% of units were built in 2000 or later and 87.7% are in buildings of 50 or more units. The survey describes the old grid as a historic residential island amid later commercial and industrial development, framed by railroads and highways.

Shingle walls and deep eaves

On painted shingles, inspect the bottom edge of each course and the corner boards, where peeling shows up early. On a four-square, the deep closed soffits and the central dormer are the high, hard-to-reach work. Budget the time there, not on the flat walls.

Concrete block foundations

Rock-faced concrete block was meant to be seen. Where it has been painted, the block needs a masonry primer and coating, and loose paint over damp block won't hold no matter what goes on top.

Two-families on a tight grid

Two-unit buildings make up 43.4% of units in Tract 3398.04, and 13.5% more are in three- and four-unit buildings. On those houses, porches and stair rails may be shared, and the owners need to agree on colors before anyone hires a painter.

Brick-trimmed cottages and postwar Capes

West of the Fellsway, the survey records Dutch Colonial and Tudor cottages on St. James Road with brick veneer on part or all of their first stories, and a planned group of post-World War II Capes on Sidney Street. On the St. James Road cottages, the painting is on the wood above and around the brick, with the brick left as is.