This cottage is on Station Street, Coventry, in an area of older homes with a golf course nearby.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

Washington, a neighborhood on the eastern side of Coventry, is the last stop in the cluster of historic mill villages that compose the town’s commercial center.

To outsiders, it’s difficult to tell where Quidnick ends and Anthony begins, and where the village of Anthony stops and Washington begins. Even longtime residents can dispute the exact boundaries.

While eastern Coventry has the former textile mills and dense neighborhoods with small house lots, western Coventry is distinctly rural. The housing choices in town are influenced by a zoning plan that allows only “rural residential” development, five-acre and three-acre house lots, in western Coventry, but allows a mix of uses on the east side.

The town is eager to see the mill sites in the eastern villages redeveloped, according to Town Planner Paul K. Sprague. And a variety of residential, industrial, commercial and business zones in eastern Coventry are in place to allow that to happen, Sprague said.

“We’re kind of jammed-in in the eastern section of town,” said Housing Authority director Julie Leddy. “Three or four miles to the west, well, it’s almost like open space, even though there are some houses there.” The authority has 195 one-bedroom units of public housing for the elderly and disabled, some in Anthony, in a development near Route 117, and some on Old North Road, near Route 3.

Washington is home to Garland Industries’ mill, which is still operating. The owner of the Anthony Mill, a former textile mill on Route 117, has plans for a mix of condominiums and retail businesses at the site, and in Harris village, in northeastern Coventry, a 153-unit condominium project has been proposed at the Harris Mill.

Washington village has primarily older housing, and many streets are within walking distance to the stores and businesses on Main Street (Route 117). Washington is also home to the Paine House Museum, a former colonial inn built in 1668, at 7 Station St. There is a newer townhouse condominium development on Station Street, with its own nine-hole golf course, near the fire station and the Paine House. Washington is one of the most affordable areas in town.

Coventry attracts buyers who want to be near South County but are also looking for more affordable options, said Kirsten Joan Means, a real estate agent with Keller Williams. “We do get some people from Massachusetts,” she said, but many Coventry buyers “are people who grew up there but have lived somewhere else and have come back.”

“There is a lot of new growth here,” Means said. Sprague said Coventry issued 114 residential building permits last year.

The state’s Multiple Listing Service had 244 active single-family house listings in Coventry this month, ranging in price from $19,900 for a mobile home to $749,900; the average price was $308,000.

In the Washington neighborhood, there were only six single-family houses for sale, and prices ranged from $155,900 to $279,900. There were also three multifamily properties for sale in Washington, at prices of $249,900, $319,000 and $379,000.

Means said that last month, two multifamily houses and 23 single-family houses were sold in Coventry. For the single-families, the low price was $45,000, for a mobile home, and the highest price was $410,000; the median price was $203,500, and the average price was $221,000.

“Between prices and taxes, it’s more affordable” than some other communities, Means said.

cdunn@projo.com