Whittenton Painters — Whittenton Street, Bay Street & the Mill River

According to the National Register nomination for Taunton's historic buildings, James Leonard set up an iron forge here in 1666 on a ten-acre site that later held the Whittenton Mills. Yarn was being produced at Whittenton by 1807, and the iron settlement had turned to textiles by the 1820s. After the mills changed hands in 1858, the property grew into a 32-building complex with its own streets of workers' housing, a railroad depot and a streetcar line.

The same nomination describes what went up around that complex once the war ended: side-hall houses, 1½-story frame duplexes and multi-family tenements, many trimmed with late Italianate and Stick Style details. Between 1890 and 1930 more houses filled in the gaps, and middle-class and worker housing spread along the Bay Street and Whittenton Street trolley lines. A strip of late-19th-century storefronts still lines Bay Street north of Monroe Street.

The census numbers point the same way. In Census Tract 6136, which takes in 300 Whittenton Street, 72.4% of the 1,813 housing units were built in 1939 or earlier, and only about one in four is a single-family detached house. A third sit in buildings of three or four units. Just 34.9% of occupied homes there are owner-occupied, so most occupied homes in the tract are rented.

The mill itself is gone. Trade press reported in August 2026 that the vacant 19th-century complex was demolished earlier that year and that Greystar had broken ground on a 390-unit, ten-building apartment community on the site.

Stick and Italianate trim takes the most hours

Brackets, window hoods, corner boards and the flat applied bands of Stick Style trim each carry their own layers of old paint. Scraping and priming that detail, rather than the plain clapboard between it, is where an exterior job on one of these duplexes spends its time.

Nearly nine in ten tract homes predate 1980

With nearly three-quarters of the tract's homes older than 1940, paid sanding or scraping beyond EPA's small-area exemptions falls under the federal lead Renovation, Repair and Painting rule. Outside, that means containment on the ground, closed windows near the work and a cleaning check before the job is signed off. Our lead-safe painting page covers what that involves.

Rental buildings with tenants at home

A three- or four-unit building means coordinating access to each apartment, keeping entries usable during the job and planning around shared porches and stairs. Owners of these buildings can plan exterior and hallway work as one project or split it by side or floor.

Individually listed landmarks, not a district

The Whittenton Fire and Police Station on Bay Street and the James Leonard House at 3 Warren Street are listed on the National Register on their own. The nomination says Taunton's residential areas were not listed as districts because so many houses had been altered, and National Register listing alone does not set rules on paint colors for private owners.