Day 4054: Skinny Spite?

"Lost friends": acrylic, collage, digital

  

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What is a Spite House?

I had never heard of it? Have you? It caught my eye, so here's the "skinny". I had planned a short missive, but as you'll see, I was fascinated and got carried away, again. We've all had bad neighbors, were they bad enough to drive you to build a spite house?

   

In simple terms, a spite house is one built specifically to inconvenience and irritate the other homeowners in the vicinity. This could be accomplished by obstructing a nice view, blocking the light or cutting off a pathway or shortcut. These buildings were not always primary residences. In ones purely built for spite, the standard comforts of a home could be sacrificed to make the structure as aggravating as possible. In centuries past, when building codes were much different, building a spite house was a viable option if you were angry enough and had the resources available

 

Three  well-known examples are the Skinny House in Boston:

44 Hull St., North End-Price: $1,200,000 Size: 1,165 square feet
2 Bedrooms: 1 Bathrooms:

 

 

 

Famously regarded by locals as The Skinny House, this small, greyish green house in downtown Boston was built as a spite house. The building was created in response to a feud between two brothers during the Civil WarTen feet wide and 30 feet long, the Skinny House was last on the market in 2017 for $895,000. After many open houses packed with onlookers, the North End property was sold for $900,000. Four years later, it’s for sale again, this time for $1.2 million. And while it’s appealing for its…unique build, it also has a lot of other redeeming traits. 

     

Miracle House, Freeport, New York

"A quirky piece of Freeport's history is on the market for $449,000. The turn-of-the-last-century house is known as the Miracle House, as it was built in one day by developer John Randall. With a rival developer planning to extend Lena Avenue west, Randall decided to swoop in and build the two-story house, a so-called "spite house," to thwart the project. He also had workers extend the street on an angle....Randall "maintains that a straight line would reduce his frontage of land so as to make it worthless."

 and third, the Old Spite House in Marblehead, MA

The house, built in  1716, stands at the intersection of Orne Street and Gas House Lane.  It is quite narrow at 10 feet but remains sizable at a listed 2700 square feet (on a 3800 square foot lot).

One theory holds that two or three brothers lived in different sections of the house and the appendage was meant to block light to the other brother’s part of the house.  Another theory claims that the house itself was built in order to block the view of the old Fountain Inn that stood above it on Orne Street.

I hunted up a local spite house, you'd be surprised by how many! This is the Alameda Spite House, CA

Broadway at Crist St., LA

 

Spite houses are built to piss off city officials or block a nasty neighbor’s sun, and are often awkward and impractical. When you’re that committed to being an irritant, function is not high on the priority list. 

In the case of the Alameda spite house in the San Francisco Bay Area, the aim was to harass the enemy on two fronts. The growing city of Alameda had commandeered a good chunk of land from a Mr. Charles Froling with the intention of building a street, with the support of an unsympathetic neighbor. Froling had intentions for the inherited slice of heaven himself—a dream home which, when thwarted, Froling turned into an architectural nightmare.

 

Using what little land he had left, a vindictive Froling built his house anyway—20 ft. high, 54 ft. long… and 10 ft. wide.

Spite houses are rare these days due to strict modern building codes, but many that have grandfathered in—like the Alameda house—are still standing, not as annoying these days as they are novel, and many now look upon the spite houses with a smile. Despite its close quarters and odd dimensions, the Alameda spite house is still occupied, and has been since its persnickety construction 100 years ago

 

 

 This silly blog has turned into a 3 - 4+ hour daily project, today being on the higher end. My own fault.

  So when I go overboard like today, I will omit the update, or visa versa.  The blog has grown so big, I will need to stunt it's growth occasionally.

 

 

A 3 minute video, carved food, here.

 

Just because ...

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