If you haven’t had a chance to read Joe Stephen’s two–part series in the Post on historic facade easements, do so. It may seem like a snoozer, but the interweaving of real estate, preservation and indirect exploitation is fascinating.

Here’s what we can do to sum it up as best we can. There are countless homes that dot the city’s historic districts (some shown here in red from a National Register of Historic Places map) that are marked with small plaques with a star on them. Those plaques indicate that the owner has donated to a nonprofit facade preservation trust, making a pledge to preserve the character of the street by not altering the facade of their home. By making the pledge, you are eligible for some nice tax breaks.

But such easements are suspect, though totally legal, as the Post writes:

Such tax deductions are increasingly common although the District already bars unapproved and historically inaccurate changes in the facades of homes in the city’s many historic districts. As a result, easement donors largely are agreeing not to change something that they cannot change anyway.

Sunday’s article starts out with the Wyoming Avenue digs of everyone’s favorite Washingtonian lobbyist/adviser/hostess, Juleanna Glover Weiss, whose 10-bedroom, $1.5 million home (the former residence of the Viscountess Gertrude d’Amecourt) is a prime example of how the preservation easement can be easily exploited.