West Side Painters — West of the lakes

William Cowdrey, an early settler, had his homestead on the north side of what is now Prospect Street, and the rise there is still listed by the U.S. Geological Survey as Cowdry Hill, 184 feet. His descendant Nathaniel built the clapboard house at 71 Prospect Street around 1764: a Georgian center-chimney frame on a rubblestone foundation, with the small side projection known regionally as a Beverly jog. It is one of the oldest buildings in town. At 61 Prospect, his son Jonas built a Federal house around 1833, and the area stayed in Cowdry hands until about 1900.

The same stretch of Prospect Street has the West Ward School of 1847, the only one of four Greek Revival district schoolhouses still standing. It closed in 1998 after a second-floor ceiling failed, and the Wakefield Historical Society restored it as a museum. At One Prospect Street, the Deacon Thomas Kendall House was rebuilt after a 1786 fire using salvaged material, and its exterior trim mixes several styles.

Census Tract 3352 covers much of the west and southwest of town, including Prospect and Converse Streets. Of its 2,660 housing units, 35.4% were built in 1939 or earlier and 19.0% in the 1950s, with a median construction year of 1952. Under half, 48.9%, are single-family detached; another 14.8% are in two-unit buildings and 27.7% in buildings of five or more. Some West Side streets north of the lake are counted in a neighboring tract, so these figures describe part of the area, not all of it.

Eighteenth-century clapboard

A house of the 1760s, like the Nathaniel Cowdry House, can carry more than two centuries of coatings. Where the buildup is thick and alligatored, spot scraping won't hold, and those areas need to come back to sound wood or a firm layer before priming. Wood siding that old is often worth repairing board by board rather than replacing.

Greek Revival and Federal trim

Corner pilasters, full entablatures, boxed gables and doorways with sidelights are flat, wide trim surfaces that show every brush mark and every patch. On houses with these features, filling, sanding and priming the trim can take longer than painting the walls.

Two-family houses

Nearly 15% of the tract's units are in two-unit buildings. On an owner-occupied two-family, scheduling has to account for two households, two sets of entries and sometimes porches stacked one above the other, and both units share one exterior that gets painted as a whole.

Pre-1980 stock throughout

In Tract 3352, 78.0% of units were built before 1980, so the lead question extends well beyond Prospect Street's landmarks. The federal RRP rule requires certified firms and lead-safe practices for paint-disturbing renovation work on pre-1978 homes.