WASHINGTON — A house built in 1887 in the Anacostia Historic District in Washington, D.C., had been vacant for decades. A development firm trying to make a quick flip partially tore it down before realizing it was in over its head and walked away.
The L’Enfant Trust, a historical preservation nonprofit organization, acquired the house and finished its restoration about five years ago.
Lauren Oswalt McHale remembers the project well. The New Palestine native started with the trust in 2006 and leads it today.
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After restoring the home, the trust put it on the market and sold it to a D.C. firefighter and his wife.
“They now have a child and another on the way, and they were so thrilled to have the opportunity to buy this home,” McHale said.
It’s just one of the ways McHale has spent her career preserving historical properties and improving communities in the nation’s capital.
The 1999 New Palestine High School graduate said she’s always been interested in history and architecture. Her father is a retired American history teacher. She grew up going on trips to historic sites.
“I think that had a huge impact on me,” she said.
She also grew up around historical farms, like the one her mother grew up on and which she enjoyed visiting as a child.
McHale saw many of the area’s old farms demolished to make way for developments.
“It always made me very sad,” she said.
She holds a bachelor of arts in art history and historic preservation and community planning from the College of Charleston and a master of science in historic preservation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
McHale became assistant to the president of the L’Enfant Trust in 2006 before moving up the ranks to director of preservation, then executive director and then president in 2017.
The trust runs a Historic Properties Redevelopment Program, which acquires and rehabilitates distressed historic buildings threatened with demolition and whose restoration would have impacts on neighborhood stabilization.
McHale said the program also aims to create affordable housing for moderate-income buyers, which she added is lacking in Washington.
The trust has four rehab projects currently under way.
“To revive those structures and bring them back to life so that they can be used and they’re a part of the community again, that’s really the greatest gift,” McHale said.
The trust’s Conservation Easement Program prevents demolition and inappropriate modification of more than 1,100 historic structures in Washington. Any exterior change to those properties needs the trust’s permission.
McHale also serves as president of the Preservation Action Foundation, the charity arm of Preservation Action, a national historic preservation lobbying organization.
The foundation focuses on fundraising and education, McHale said, along with outreach to historic preservation organizations across the country like state historic preservation offices.
Congress appropriates funds to historic preservation efforts across the country.
“It’s very important to be able to go back to our representatives on the Hill and say the money you put forward for historic preservation funded these projects in all of these states, and because of these projects, there were X amount of jobs created and X amount of revenue put in communities,” McHale said.
Barbara Andrews, one of McHale’s art teachers at New Palestine High School, remembers her former student having an amazing attitude, eagerness to learn and willingness to go the extra mile.
“Just someone who truly had a zest for learning and making a difference,” Andrews said.
Andrews added she’s not surprised by McHale’s career and success.
“I’m just so excited for Lauren and the work she’s doing, and I’m just honored I was just maybe a tiny, tiny part of it as her teacher,” she said.
