Being passive aggressive can take many forms, but a slight bump past someone walking to slow at the mall cannot compare to the masterfully laborious act of passive aggressiveness that is spite housing. Yes, spite housing.
Basically, there are people who build housing structures for the sole purpose of annoying the neighbors. It doesn’t have to be an entirely livable place, as long as it is an obstruction to the neighborhood. For hundreds of years, there have been examples of this catty style of property management.
When a veteran returned home to Boston, he found that his hateful brother had inherited the family house and left him only with a pitiful plot ten feet wide. So, the slighted veteran decided to build a middle finger of an abode, effectively blocking out the light in his brother’s window.
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In the 19th century, one decidedly punk rock developer was so opposed to idea of Freepoint, NY, being laid out into a grid, that he began erecting a sweet Victorian style house on a triangular plot of land. Overnight.
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During the turn of the 20th century, all Charles Froling wanted to do was build his dream house, but the city of Alameda wanted to take his land and build a road. The left him with only a sliver of land. Unperturbed, he turned his dream home into a little nightmare palace, at least for his neighbors.
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When, in 1908, Francis O’Reilly’s neighbor refused to buy the rest of the land for their plot, O’Reilly used it to build a little house that is 37 ft long and 8 ft wide. It still stands today and is occupied by an interior decorating firm.
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The Old Spite House was built in 1717 and it is the oldest spite house on record. The story goes that two brothers inherited the home, but hated each other so much, they couldn’t live together. The only option was to build a tiny, 10ft wide home separate from (but still attached to) the original house. That way, both bothers could live in the house, but not really.
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The Richardson Spite House in New York City was built in 1882 because the owner of this small plot of land couldn’t sell it to the owner of the adjacent plot. To prove its worth, he built an extremely impractical apartment building that eventually was demolished.
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On the left here you can see a sliver of a house, about 55 inches wide. Built in 1925, the Montlake Spite House in Seattle came about when a neighbor refused to buy the rest of the adjoining land in a plot. It’s essentially a single lane in a bowling alley with a door.
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John Tyler, the first American-physician to perform a cataract operation, constructed this building to spite this city of Frederick, Maryland, when they wanted to build a road directly through his plot of land.
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In 1806, when Thomas Mcobb returned to Maine from sea, he found his brother had inherited his family’s mansion. To spite his brother, he built an equally fantastic mansion directly across from the one he lost.
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In 2013, LGBT activist Aaron Jackson found that the house across from the infamously anti-gay Westboro Baptist and painted it all the colors of the rainbow. Tourists who once came for the church now go to check out the house that spites it.
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There’s nothing funnier to me than the idea of living like a spiteful monk in a crappy house just to piss off the neighbors. These are all true heroes of mine. Spite life, ya’ll!
