2025 Year-in-Review: Five Highlights from the Trust
Thank you to our network of supporters and donors. In 2025, your partnership helped fuel five major accomplishments:
1. Creating Affordable Homeownership in Historic Anacostia. This year, the Trust continued to make headway on the rehabilitation of 1220 Maple View Place SE (“Big Green”) into multi‐unit affordable housing. Critical shoring, stabilization, and dismantling work was completed while we await construction permits for the full rehabilitation.
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- Big Green following stabilization & partial dismantle
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- Stabilization & shoring system installed at Big Green
2. Strengthened conservation easement program. This year, the Trust accepted two new easement donations on prominent historic properties in DC:
- A cut-stone duplex built in 1909 by a master stonemason and individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
- A large, detached Colonial Revival home in the Mount Pleasant Historic District built in 1902 by Nicholas R. Grimm for developer Lewis E. Breuninger as his family residence.
Easements are a powerful preservation tool: they protect a historic property from demolition, neglect, and inappropriate alterations, ensuring that its historic character is preserved in perpetuity for future generations to come. In many cases, an easement provides the highest level of protection available for a historic property. For buildings not covered by local preservation laws, an easement may be the only safeguard against demolition.
3. Expanded educational programming. We were thrilled to welcome a summer graduate intern from Notre Dame’s Master of Science in Historic Preservation program. We also hosted 25 middle school students from Washington Latin Public Charter School (WLPCS) for a full day of programming in Historic Anacostia, where students learned about the neighborhood’s architectural history and got an up-close look at our Historic Properties Redevelopment Program.
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- WLPCS students learn about the Trust’s HPRP
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- WLPCS students explore Frederick Douglass’ “growlery!”
4. Elevated organizational visibility. Trust staff participated in more than seven panels, conferences, and public programs this year. We were honored to speak at events hosted by the DC Preservation League, the National Preservation Partners Network, the Capitol Hill Restoration Society, the Citizens Association of Georgetown (CAG), and the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art (ICAA).
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- ICAA event with Cunningham & Quill Architects
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- Trust President Lauren McHale presents at ICAA/CAG event
5. Another strong year of grant funding. In 2025, the Trust received new grants from national and local partners, including The 1772 Foundation, The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, in support of our Historic Properties Redevelopment Program and Conservation Easement Program.
Thank you for making this progress possible and helping us continue to protect DC’s historic buildings across all eight wards. We look forward to building on this momentum with you in the year ahead.
Warm regards,
Lauren McHale
President & CEO