Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Spite Houses About this episode A spite house is a structure that is built by one party to irritate another, or to cause some sort of difficulty or even damage. And there have been a lot of them built over the years, though there aren’t a huge number remaining.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Tracy V. Wilson? This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:06 Speaker 01 That sound? That's the National Squash League. Pro teams, the world's best players, and rallies so fast you'll forget to breathe. Season four is in full swing and every match streams free on YouTube. Big hits, bigger rivalries, and a front row seat from wherever you are. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.
0:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare.
1:18 Tracy V. Wilson? Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune into Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Workplace chaos. We've all been there. Deadlines are slipping, projects are piling up, and suddenly you realize the missing piece is the right person. That's when you say, this is a job for Sponsored Jobs. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job post gets a boost so you can connect with quality candidates faster. In fact, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs.
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2:15 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:26 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So this episode is 100% inspired by Instagram. Yeah. I don't know. Do you follow Realtor Lisa DuBois? No. She is hilarious. She came to a lot of people's attention because she started doing this very funny thing where she would show a house that she has listed and she does this thing where she whispers and she plays hide and seek in the house and she would be like, this house has amazing, has amazing high ceilings and mid-century modern architecture. Where do you think I might be hiding in this room? And, but she's very funny. And I love her because in addition to being very funny and making
3:09 Holly Frey? those videos, which are very endearing, as she has gotten more and more popular, she's kind of using that platform to also showcase like local businesses that she thinks are great or like bring light to other things. And they're always really fun and she's a delight. But anyway, she recently mentioned a spite house in one of her posts and I got to thinking about spite houses. And I was like, why have we never done an episode on that? That's super fun. So here we are. Just in case you don't know what a spite house is, it's a structure that's built by one party to irritate another or to cause some sort of difficulty or obstacle, or perhaps even damage.
3:50 Holly Frey? And there have been a lot of them built over the years, although there aren't a huge number remaining for various reasons. One is that many just have fallen down or been torn down or been redeveloped over. And another is that in some places, the reason you don't see them now is that we have a lot more building codes than we used to have. So there are a lot more municipal laws that would prevent somebody from building a structure that functions in the way some of these do. So today, we're only going to talk about four of them. All of these are in the US. But this could easily be one of those topics where there are subsequent episodes because there are a lot more spite houses than this, some of which have great stories that I would
4:34 Holly Frey? love to cover at some point. So if your favorite isn't here, hold tight. It could be in the future. But we're going to talk about four today.
4:43 Tracy V. Wilson? The first spite house we're talking about is the Macabre Spite House, originally built in Phippsburg, Maine, but now located in Rockport, Maine. And we will get to that relocation, but to give context, we have to start with a man named James Macabre, born in Londonderry, Ireland in 1710. In 1731, Macabre moved to Phippsburg and started what would be a very prosperous life. It's not totally clear whether his first wife, Beatrice Rogers, came from Ireland with him, or if they got married in the colonies, but she was also from Ireland.
5:21 Holly Frey? And James built a log cabin on land that he had acquired, and he and Beatrice lived there for more than three decades as he continued to also buy up surrounding land. And eventually, he owned a large parcel of 1,000 acres. He made his fortune in the lumber industry as well as other business interests, and he was able to support a rapidly growing family. He and Beatrice had a reported 12 children together.
5:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Beatrice died in 1772. Two years later, in 1774, James remarried to a woman named Hannah Nichols Miller. James built a new home for Hannah, a way fancier home than that log cabin. This one was a four-square, meaning it was two stories with four rooms on each level. This upgraded home also reflected James's increased status in the Phippsburg area. He had taken on a role of leadership in the town. And as the Revolutionary War broke out, James, at this point in his 60s, became head of the Phippsburg Safety Committee. Hannah and James had three children, a son named Thomas and twin daughters.
6:33 Tracy V. Wilson? But Hannah and James were only married for five years before Hannah died in 1779.
6:39 Holly Frey? James married for a third time. His third wife was Mary Langdon Storer Hill, and they got married in 1782. Mary, like James, had lost two spouses. And she was 48 when she married James, and she had three children of her own from previous marriages. Two of those children from Mary's first marriage were adults when Mary and James got married, but the youngest, Mark Langdon Hill, was just 10 years old. And so he grew up from that point in the McCob family.
7:10 Tracy V. Wilson? James McCob died at the age of 78 in 1788. Shortly after his death, his son Thomas went to sea. When Thomas returned, he was anticipating that he would take possession of his father's house, but he found that things had played out much differently. His stepmother, Mary, and his stepbrother, Mark, were still living in the house. Additionally, Mark had married Thomas's sister, Mary. It appears that James's third wife, Mary, had orchestrated this situation so that her son would legally get the house instead of Thomas. The exact legalities of this move are a little bit unclear.
7:55 Tracy V. Wilson? A 1925 write-up of the story in the Portland Press Herald states, quote, "When James McCob died, his widow brought about a marriage between her son by her first husband and a daughter of James McCob by his first wife, which gave her control of the large and beautiful estate." Obviously, this paper, a little misinformed about the fact that James and Mary were each on their third marriages.
8:24 Holly Frey? Yeah, so it remains unclear to me why that would legally cut Thomas out of the equation in terms of inheritance, but it did. And Thomas was enraged, and he hatched a revenge plot, probably, maybe. Right next to his family home, he wanted to build the biggest, most beautiful house that he could to make that four-square house that his stepmother had cheated him out of look tiny by comparison. And that's perhaps maybe the, the most interesting part of this whole story because by all accounts, Thomas was not angry with his stepbrother Mark. He was irate with his father's widow, Mary. Thomas and Mark actually went into business together in 1796, forming a shipbuilding
9:09 Holly Frey? company called Hill and McCob.
9:12 Tracy V. Wilson? So there's another twist to this story that Holly didn't see mentioned anywhere. It took quite a number of years for this spite house to be built. Some accounts say Thomas completed his house in 1806 and the others say that he built it in 1806. There's an important distinction there. The house was not done until 10 years after he and Mark had been in business together. And Mary Langdon Hill McCob, that stepmother he alleged to have vowed to get revenge on, actually died in 1806. Her gravestone lists her death as March 24th of that year. Given how difficult it would have been to start a major construction project in Maine
9:56 Tracy V. Wilson? in the winter, it seems likely that Thomas didn't even start building this house until after Mary had died, if all of that construction took place in 1806. Even if it was under construction before that point, it's not clear whether she ever would have even seen it or appreciated its scale and grandeur. So even if he did outdo the home he had lost in terms of its size and its style, they might not have been actually despite the deceased Mary. It seems like it might not have been a spite house at all. And there's also a darker take that knowing about it may have been what sent Mary to her end, but we just don't really have any confirmation or information on that. It is still called a spite house officially though.
10:41 Tracy V. Wilson? We'll talk about its sort of official spite house standing in just a moment.
10:45 Holly Frey? Because obviously Thomas did build his house, even if he waited for Mary to die, in which case it was the most polite spite house ever. Uh, and it was, as he promised, massive and grand. In a filing with the National Park Service from 1974, it is described as, quote, "a fine example of architecture in the federal style." The house's footprint is an almost square rectangle of just under 45 by 40 feet, or 14 by 12 meters. The front and sides of the house each had six windows originally, and one side of the house had a duplicate entrance to the front door.
11:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Thomas McCobb did not get to enjoy his fine mansion for even a decade. In 1815, while he was serving a term in the Massachusetts Legislature as a District of Maine representative, Thomas died unexpectedly. He had not gotten married. He had no children. So the spite house went to the family of his stepbrother, Mark Langdon Hill. Yet another way in which his spite move didn't really play out as perhaps intended if this truly was a spite move. Incidentally, Mark Langdon Hill went on to have a illustrious political career, serving in Congress on behalf of Massachusetts, then as a representative of Maine, once Maine was separated from Massachusetts and became its own
12:07 Tracy V. Wilson? state, among other appointments.
12:10 Holly Frey? The Thomas McCobb spite house has a story that goes beyond its origin with the McCobb and Hill families, one that Thomas McCobb surely did not foresee. The house was sold out of the family in the 1800s, and it changed hands a few times. In 1915, it was purchased by a man named Adalbert Williams, but it was difficult to keep up. And in 1925, it was sold again, this time to Donald Dodge, a man from Philadelphia. And at that point, the house was in pretty rough shape.
12:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Dodge paid $6,000 for the spite house, and he spent a lot more to get it just the way he liked it and just where he wanted it. Dodge didn't want to move to Phippsburg, so he had the whole home moved to his summer estate at Rockport. Dodge and his moving contractor, Arthur R. Tingley, hired a barge from New Jersey to come up to Maine so that it could be loaded up with the house and carried 85 miles north along the coast to Rockport. In addition to the move, the house got an expansion once it got to its final destination.
13:15 Holly Frey? Yeah, it had two, a wing added on either side. In addition to those two new wings, the macabre house also had an extensive landscape planned around it, led by landscape architect Robert Wheelwright, who created flower gardens in a formal colonial style, as well as a gazebo and other outdoor living spaces. In 2018, the Maine Historical Society shared information about the plants that were kept in those gardens, and that information came from correspondence and order forms that Dodge and his gardener, Henry B. Williams, exchanged with various nurseries.
13:51 Tracy V. Wilson? One set of exchanges in these letters from October 1954 is very cute. Apparently, in a catalog from a nursery called Strawberry Hill, the bulbs being sold for the lily known as Washingtonianum was described as being the size of a lumberjack's fist. Mr. Dodge thought that was inaccurate, writing, quote, "I was particularly interested in the bulb of Washingtonianum to see how big is a lumberjack's fist. It is a fine bulb, but not up to my idea of a lumberjack's fist. I have bloomed this lily here several years and think it is perfectly exquisite. I secured some real top forest soil from the base of a large oak tree, which blew
14:34 Tracy V. Wilson? down in a recent hurricane, and I am using it around your lilies." So this seems like a playful comment and not a real criticism. The rest of the letter notes the other plants that were received at Rockport and how much Dodge loved them. The reply from grower A.D. Rothman notes, quote, "Your comments on the Washingtonianum and the lumberjack's fist was amusing. Remember, sir, that nurserymen live drab lives, and their catalogs with their opportunity for nurserymen's prose are virtually their souls, sir cease."
15:07 Holly Frey? Not necessarily a story that's particularly important to the spite house nature of this whole thing, but it was so cute that I had to include it. In addition to a wide range of lilies, which Dodge clearly loved, there were also azaleas, calmia, rhododendron, mahonia, and bayberry grown at the house, among others. Some of those gardens and outdoor spaces that were so carefully tended remain, but many of the gardens were reduced in size, or streamlined, or eliminated to facilitate easier upkeep. That was all done after Dodge died in the 1970s. In 1960, the Thomas McCob Spite House was listed on the National Park Service's Historic American Buildings Survey.
15:50 Holly Frey? And then in 1974, it was included on the National Register of Historic Places.
15:56 Tracy V. Wilson? The original McCob House, the one that Thomas thought he was going to inherit but did not, still stands. Today, it's a bed and breakfast, known as the 1774 Inn, marking the year that it was built.
16:08 Holly Frey? Coming up, we're going to talk about a house in California that really might not be a spite house, but it sure has gotten a bad reputation as one over the years, thanks in part to a newspaper write-up that we'll get into. We'll do all of that after the sponsor break.
16:26 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
16:28 Holly Frey? Hey, everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
16:49 Speaker 03 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
16:57 Holly Frey? That includes Field Services Manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
17:03 Speaker 04 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
17:09 Holly Frey? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
17:13 Speaker 04 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.
17:17 Speaker 03 What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
17:20 Holly Frey? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
17:29 Speaker 01 That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at nsl.sport.
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19:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life. Love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only
19:49 Tracy V. Wilson? gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
20:09 Holly Frey? This next spite house is in Alameda, California. That sits on an archipelago west of Oakland. And this is one of those instances where there are competing stories about the origin of the spite house. So, the way this is structured is we're going to walk you through the most common one, which is likely not correct, so keep that in mind as we talk about it. And then a somewhat tragic event related to the house. And then we're going to rewind to a different version of this spite house's origin before we land at the account that is possibly the most boring and makes the most sense.
20:44 Tracy V. Wilson? This one starts with a man named Charles Anton Froling. Charles was born in 1880. We don't know a whole lot about him, other than that he was Swedish. Sometimes he's said to have been a railroad worker, although one obituary states that he was a contractor. We know he was married to a woman named Gertrude. And that couple had two sons, Gilbert C. A. Froling and Fred Froling.
21:09 Holly Frey? I should also mention that some accounts say he was a railroad contractor. So, he was building things for the railroad, perhaps, may account for the variations that we see. So, the story normally goes that in the early 1900s, Charles inherited property on Broadway in Alameda, and he planned to build his dream home there. But the city actually took a significant slice of his land in order to build a cross street, that's now Crist Street. All that was left of Froling's lot was a 10 by 54 foot rectangle. That's roughly 3 by 16.5 meters, so not exactly a huge tract of land, and a weird shape.
21:49 Holly Frey? And he supposedly asked his neighbor, Mrs. Annette Westerdahl, to band with him in fighting the city's plan for a cross street, but that she didn't want any part of it. And perhaps was kind of into the idea of her house being at an intersection with a view, since Froling's lot would not support construction of a house. So according to this story, Froling built one anyway, just to spite her, and built it to take up his entire lot, 20 feet high, so her view was completely obstructed. There is, truthfully, not just a made up part, one inch between these two houses. The exterior wall for Froling's house that is on that one inch gap had to be assembled and painted first,
22:34 Holly Frey? then put into place, and then the rest of the house built from there. So on the crist street side, the second floor overhangs the first to be about 12 feet wide. So it has a little extra upstairs space.
22:46 Tracy V. Wilson? There's a sad development in the story and legacy of the Alameda Spite House, and it involves suicide. So if you don't want to hear about that, skip forward a couple of minutes.
22:58 Holly Frey? On November 12th, 1908, the Oakland Tribune ran a story about a death that places the blame for a suicide on the Alameda Spite House right from the headline, which reads, "Freak House May Have Been One of the Causes of Woman Taking Her Life." This article notes that Mrs. Annette Westerdahl died, quote, "from inhaling gas with suicidal intent at her home 1345 Broadway." The story shared information about two notes that were left by Mrs. Westerdahl, one to her son, in which she thanked him for taking care of her and asking to be buried simply, and one to her doctor stating that she had wished to die and that she was intentionally ending her life. And this tragic story mentions several details of her life
23:42 Holly Frey? that may very well have contributed to her mental state, a separation from her husband and the recent death of one of her adult sons, and that she had recently been released from Harrison Sanitarium just a week before her death. But those are all mentioned just in passing. This article instead makes the spite house the clear villain. The bigger problem, according to the paper, was that she had lost income from renting her home out to tenants and rumors because of what the paper referred to as, quote, "the freak house."
24:13 Tracy V. Wilson? But Froling's house would have only just been finished when Mrs. Westerdahl died. So it kind of seems like the paper is just trying to defame the house. It drives this agenda home, even in the caption to the photo of the Westerdahl home, which reads, quote, "The large house is that of the late Mrs. Westerdahl on Broadway. Alameda in the freak house is that of Charles Froling, which may have worried Mrs. Westerdahl to death."
24:40 Holly Frey? And that story has some other issues. In a 2024 article in the East Bay Times, the home's current owner stated that that story was untrue and that the real story is that there was not a street plan at the time, but that Froling did have an agreement with Westerdahl that he would buy part of her backyard to enlarge his small lot for a house. But then Westerdahl backed out of the idea and that catalyzed the building of the house.
25:08 Tracy V. Wilson? Perhaps the clearest, most sensible and least thrilling version of the story came from Froling's son Gilbert in an interview he did with the Oakland Tribune in 1957 for an article about narrow houses. Gilbert was nine when the so-called spite house was constructed and he told the Tribune that the odd narrow lot at the corner of Kristen Broadway had been all that his father could afford. The lot was cut down because of the Chris Street construction, but that had been before the Frolings owned it. Charles had, according to his son, the idea that if he and Mrs. Westerdahl compromised, she could have the front of his lot as a little side yard and he could have the back of her lot.
25:53 Tracy V. Wilson? That wouldn't change how much square footage he had, but it would give him a less severe rectangle. But Westerdahl did not go for that idea.
26:03 Holly Frey? Still, according to Gilbert, building the house was not an act of spite at all, but just a matter of his father working with what he had. He told the paper, "Father was a big, easygoing Swede. That was what he could afford to build. We were a poor family. Everybody had a place to sleep and a bathroom. It's just like an ordinary house." The Frohlings lived in their narrow house for a decade before moving. Charles Frohling died in 1924, and neither of the obituaries that I found in research even mention the spite house.
26:37 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1957, the then-owner of the house, Mrs. Elsie Darcy, who the Tribune described as, quote, "A short, active, 74-year-old grandmother who is a cat fancier," tried to help out her next-door neighbors and have the whole house moved. Her intention was that if it could be shifted back on the lot a little, it would enable the neighbors to get some sunshine views. But the city said that was not possible. It was a teardown or nothing. That was in part because in 1938, the city's building code had been updated in ways that would make building such narrow houses illegal. Frohling's house was exempt because it was already built before that, but it couldn't really be changed under the new codes.
27:22 Holly Frey? That house still stands, and as of that 2024 article, it's had the same owners for more than two decades. They love it and told the East Bay Times, quote, "There are people out there laughing, saying, 'How can someone live in there? How do you get a bed in there? It must be like living in a car.' It's not. We have a queen-size bed. The ceilings are extremely tall. The middle of the house is open to the roof. It's a little jewel box."
27:48 Tracy V. Wilson? We're going to take a break and hear from the sponsors that keep the podcast going, and then we will be back with two more spite houses.
28:00 Speaker 01 That sound? That's the National Squash League. Pro teams, the world's best players, and rallies so fast you'll forget to breathe. Season four is in full swing, and every match streams free on YouTube. Big hits, bigger rivalries, and a front row seat from wherever you are. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at nsl.sport.
28:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessa have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends
29:12 Tracy V. Wilson? proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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31:15 Holly Frey? Our next spite house is in Frederick, Maryland, and it is the work of Dr. John Tyler. And this one is a legit spite house. Well before the construction of his house, Tyler had made a name for himself as an ophthalmologist. He's sometimes said to have been the first doctor in the US to perform a cataract surgery, but it's really more accurate to say he was one of the first doctors doing it. That was in the late 1700s. An important distinction made in a write-up about the house in the LA Times in 1990 notes that he was the first American-born doctor to perform such procedures. Just FYI, couching, the technique Tyler is said to have used, involves piercing the eye and then physically moving the lens
31:58 Holly Frey? so that the clouded area no longer obscures vision. I'm going to tell you now, there's a source for it that I don't even have in the source list because I couldn't look at that page anymore and I ran away.
32:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Holly may be saying that because I visibly winced.
32:14 Holly Frey? I visibly winced. I can handle most stuff, but eyeball surgery, I can handle touching of the eye, putting in context, but eyeball surgery, a little squinkier. But in any case, I just wanted to clarify what exactly he was known for. Tyler was, in addition to performing this surgery, also a civic and community leader, and he had served as a senator.
32:36 Tracy V. Wilson? But all of that was well before 1814, when the Spite House was built. Over the years, Tyler had amassed a good bit of wealth, and he had invested in property. He'd gotten a significant parcel via a public auction after the land had been seized from a Tory. That parcel sat in a position physically where a street, which was Record Street, ended in front of it. Behind the property, there was another street, West Patrick Street, and city planners thought it would be a really good idea to extend Record Street and connect these two roadways. That would mean cutting right through Tyler's land.
33:15 Holly Frey? Dr. Tyler did not want to lose any of his property to this public works project. He protested the plan through official channels, but he didn't really make any headway. He started to look through the various laws and ordinances that applied to private property and roadwork, and then he found it. There was a local law to Frederick that stated that if a substantial building was in the path of a proposed roadway, the road could not be built there. Now, at the time, the lot where the road was supposed to go was empty. Tyler actually lived in a house that was on the lot next to it, but he hatched a plan.
33:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Tyler started reaching out to builders, and he found one who was willing to help him out, and in a hurry. And by in a hurry, we mean that night, because the roadwork was supposed to start the next day. The road crew did arrive the following morning, but what they found was a foundation being laid, and Dr. Tyler sitting in a chair and overseeing things. I'm like, this is Arthur Dent, but backwards.
34:21 Holly Frey? The road was rerouted to cut around the new construction and Tyler got to keep his lot intact. He did complete construction on a three-story house and he rented that out. After Tyler's death, the house went through a chain of owners and because of his size, it has bedrooms on each floor. It's been a bed and breakfast for long stretches of time over the years. There doesn't appear to be a bed and breakfast operating there right now. No, I went down a rabbit hole looking for it. And I found like listed on one of those sites that aggregates inns and bed and breakfasts. It listed, but when you click through, there's nothing there. And then I looked for it on another map site and
35:06 Holly Frey? it said, that is closed. So it's, it's not there now, but the, the building still is. This brings us to our last house and it is the one that originally started this idea. Cause it's what was mentioned in that Instagram post, and that is the Hollinsbury spite house in the Old Town District of Alexandria, Virginia. And this house has become really famous through the years. It's become a curiosity and a point of pride for the neighborhood. And the current owners who have had it for quite some time have been very game about talking to the press about this house's history and how it fits into their life.
35:42 Tracy V. Wilson? This one starts in the 1820s and a man named John Hollinsbury. Hollinsbury was a brickmaker and he lived at 525 Queen Street, but he was plagued by a problem or many problems in the form of carriages. Between his home and the next, there was an alley and it was narrow, but that did not stop carriage drivers from trying to squeak through the alley as a shortcut. And often they did not really fit. They kept gouging the exterior wall of Hollinsbury's house. Additionally, there was a lot of foot traffic and loitering and John, who was the city council member did not like this. So finally he had an idea.
36:23 Holly Frey? And that idea was to purchase the alley, paying $45.65 for it. No paltry sum in the late 1820s. And then the brickmaker cut off the alley to through traffic by bricking in each end of it and putting a roof over the top, creating a very narrow house. The resulting structure is just seven feet wide. It's two stories tall with a reported 480 total square feet of space, although some write-ups about the home say it only has 350. You'll also see a couple other numbers floating around out there.
36:59 Tracy V. Wilson? One of the pieces of supporting evidence for the veracity of this story, because it has some variations, is the fact that the interior walls, which are just the exterior walls of Hollinsbury's house and his neighbors, do indeed still show those dings and gouges from carriages. The variations have no real substantiation. It's all just gossip and they involve variations of the idea that John had some kind of quarrel with his neighbor or that he may have even been making the space for another family member to live in.
37:31 Holly Frey? Yeah, those don't have a lot of information to back them up. The only real piece of evidence, evidence, is those gouges in the walls. John Hollinsbury died on June 16th, 1856, at the age of 84. At that point, he had been a resident of Alexandria for 75 years, and the unique narrow house he created has gone through several owners and identities since then, including being a schoolhouse for a while.
37:58 Tracy V. Wilson? But today, the Hollinsbury Spite House is a private home. It's passed through a number of hands, but in 1990, it was purchased by John Sammis. He owns it with his wife, Colleen, and the two of them gave an interview for the New York Times in 2008, in which Colleen told the story of the two of them meeting at a dinner party and how wowed she was when she found out John owned the Spite House. As for John's history with the house, he knew about it well before he bought it and has said that he, when he was walking around the city for lunch or for meetings, he would often purposely take in a route that would take him past this curious little house. He told the Washington Post in 2006, quote, "One Sunday, I saw a small ad in the paper
38:43 Tracy V. Wilson? that described this little house and I knew which one it was immediately. I got in my car and went down there to the open house and bought it that day. I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. I knew I wouldn't live in it full time. It just seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up."
38:59 Holly Frey? Although he may not have had a plan when he signed the deal for the deed, which cost him $135,000, Samus hired a contractor and a decorator to update the home for modern living while still retaining its historic personality. So they did things like install AC, for example, and to make more space, the backyard was turned into a garden and sort of an outdoor living space.
39:21 Tracy V. Wilson? The bright blue house is a regular stop on historical tours of Old Town Alexandria. So though it was built by Hollins Berry to keep people he didn't like away, now it draws lots of visitors.
39:36 Holly Frey? I love the kind of flip of how that played out. But those are some spite houses. I love spite houses. Meantime, the best part is more behind the scenes. I have a listener mail. This is from our listener Yuan, whose name I probably mispronounced slightly. I'm doing my best, fingers crossed, who is writing about Tamara de Lempica and writes, "Ladies, on my way to the Young Museum today, I re-listened to your Tamara Lempica episode to make sure her life story was fresh. The ticket agent surprised me when he asked me if I was to visit the Tamara de Lempica exhibition. I made a mental note not to skip the C in
40:18 Holly Frey? her name. Given her Polish roots, CH sounded about right. Then, the bio page in several places on interpretive panels and side panels says that critics used to rave about Monsieur de Lempitski because she signed her early work, T de Lempitski, Monsieur Lempiki's masculine form. Given that C was followed by a consonant, TZ makes more sense? Maybe the ticket agent was just attempting at Polish, or maybe I simply misheard. Wikipedia further indicates that the first letter is softened and sounds like W, although I doubt if there is public awareness outside Slavic populations. Meanwhile, US and TV radio hosts had passing pronunciations of lekulezza."
41:01 Holly Frey? Before I go on with this email, what I will say is, I- Had looked at all of these variations and I eventually defaulted to the way her great granddaughter says it, because the DeYoung produced like a short documentary about the exhibit and she pronounces it more or less the way we pronounced it. And so that's just what I defaulted to, just in case anybody's curious. Also, given Tamara D'Olmpica and her personality, the fact that she changed her name to sound more artsy, I guess, I think we have some leeway. I also, my friend who inspired the episode in the first place, mentioned she's gone back to the exhibit a couple of times and she said, I don't think anyone I
41:45 Holly Frey? have talked to there at the museum has ever used her last name. They just say Tamara every time. So this might be a confusion situation for everyone. In any case, to complete the email, "The exhibit is really rich. Not only are the arts stunning, but also the stories placed throughout the exhibit and your podcast enrich each other perfectly. But the exhibition shows no abstract. There's not even a mention of this post-war direction. Meanwhile, the show blames the 1941 New York and San Francisco failures on the overly religious tone in the selections. The eight out of original 12 San Francisco pieces in exhibit indeed lack the edge of her Art Deco era despite similarity in techniques. DeYoung conjectures
42:27 Holly Frey? that she perhaps wanted to avoid attention of antisemites by selecting this theme. But those interpretations appear too speculative to me. Considering her parents converted before she was even born, considering that she was well received in the US in the 30s when antisemite sentiment was heightened, these pieces, as well as the Gazette First Communion, which Gazette could not recall, could easily be common subjects of an artist of that time, especially someone who had great grasp of previous masters. I looked into Tamara's granddaughter's book in the gift store and could not find anything to support the museum's interpretations either. Thanks again for the reminder that the exhibition was to close soon. I had a joyful day at DeYoung. A new exhibit of Henri Matisse's original plates
43:11 Holly Frey? for jazz was another big surprise. If you remove his name, I couldn't connect the book to Matisse." Thank you so much for this email. I will say also, a couple of people have emailed us because I mentioned with some woe that I was not going to make it to San Francisco in time and said, hey, you know, it's coming to Houston after that. So see you soon, Houston. I'm gonna make it work however I have to, even if it's just a quick day trip where I fly out and see it and come right home because I really want to see this exhibit. So, thank you, thank you, thank you for writing us. It is an interesting thing, her name becomes this kind of swirl if nobody really has a solid decision on it, which cracks me up
43:53 Holly Frey? a little bit. It seems very much in line with her as a person. She'd probably chastise us and take our plates of food away. In any case, if you would like to write to us, you could do so at [email protected] . You can also subscribe to the show if you haven't already on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
44:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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45:37 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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