A woman who made international headlines for restoring a lighthouse in Ohio is seeking to undertake similar duties at Ash Grove in Tysons.
Later this month, the Fairfax County Park Authority (FCPA) will begin reviewing and soliciting community feedback on Sheila Consaul’s proposal to move into and help maintain the historic house at 8881 Ashgrove House Lane as part of the agency’s Resident Curator Program.
An evaluation team will launch the process to determine whether Consaul should be designated as the home’s curator with a live-streamed work session at 10 a.m. on Oct. 22, but the FCPA will start accepting public comments online and by email on Oct. 15 through Nov. 14.
Additional work sessions are scheduled for 10 a.m. on Nov. 12 and 19, if needed. The park authority will also hold a public information meeting at Patrick Henry Library (101 Maple Avenue East) in Vienna at 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 28.
“The meeting will include an overview of the Resident Curator Program, the curator application for the Ash Grove house and an opportunity for community members to ask questions,” the FCPA said in a press release.
A resident of Northern Virginia for 40 years, Consaul works in communications, but an interest in historic preservation and a desire for a summer home led her to purchase the abandoned Fairport Harbor West Lighthouse off the Lake Erie coast in Ohio when the U.S. General Services Administration put it up for auction in 2009.
For a winning bid of $71,010, she became the first person to live in the lighthouse since the 1940s, signing the deed on Nov. 1, 2011. Despite challenges with deterioration, a lack of utilities and the site’s inaccessibility, Consaul and the contractor and volunteers she enlisted to help turned the nearly-century-old building into a livable home while preserving its historical character, according to a 2021 essay she wrote for Midwest Living.
The now-completed project cost an estimated $300,000, CNBC reported. Consaul won a preservation merit award from the Ohio State Historic Preservation Office in 2022 for her work on the lighthouse.
In her application for the resident curator program, Consaul says she will apply the experience she gained with historic preservation to Ash Grove, a 2.5-story plantation house originally built in 1790 by Thomas Fairfax.
“I would become not only the resident curator and day-to-day caretaker, but an ambassador of preserving historic properties, particularly those held by Fairfax County,” Consaul wrote. “Living at Ash Grove would also afford me the opportunity to become part of the local Tysons neighborhood as well as share the property, its history and the need to preserve it with guests and visitors.”
The park authority’s resident curator program offers free, long-term leases to historic properties in exchange for the tenant rehabilitating them. There’s also a public access requirement that’s generally fulfilled through open houses, though the nonprofit ServiceSource, for example, runs a cafe and gift shop in Ellmore Farmhouse at Frying Pan Farm Park.
At Ash Grove, Consaul proposes providing public access with an annual open house, something she also offers at the Fairport lighthouse. She also plans to give scheduled tours to students, preservation organizations, community groups and others.
Finally, she says in her application that she would use her experience in communications to establish a social media presence for the property.
“Social media reaches a wide range of audiences and having a social media presence would expose Ash Grove to key audiences who have an interest in history and historic preservation,” she wrote.
As part of the rehabilitation, Consaul says she hopes to fully renovate the kitchen instead of just bringing in modern appliances and create an outdoor composting system for yard debris and food scraps. She also commits to making any necessary changes to bring the house in compliance with ADA standards.
Image via Fairfax County Park Authority
