Posts Tagged ‘Spite Houses’
Your Spite House Roundup
While reporting this week’s column about Clarendon’s “Skinny House,” one of City Paper’s resident Northern Virginians informed me about “Spite Houses,” tiny slab-like houses wedged in between other properties and supposedly built out of spite.
A few people have referred to the Skinny House as a modern day version of this tradition. I don’t think that’s quite the case. You could call the property a “Tough Luck Nimbys” House. But talking with builder Clarke Simpson, I never got the sense that he was erecting his home as a pure “screw-you” to the neighbors. Rather, he just wanted to make a buck off the land, as he always intended to do.
Nevertheless, perhaps the house will fit into local lore about other area Spite Houses. Here are some from the region and beyond.
This Alexandria Spite House is situated close to the intersection of Queen Street and N. Asaph Street. “It’s called the Spite House by some because John Hollensbury, the owner of one of the adjacent houses, built it in 1830 to keep horse-drawn wagons and loiterers out of his alley,” according to a February 2008 New York Times article. The house is 7 feet wide, about 25 feet deep and 325 square feet in two stories, the same piece states.
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