Some people have built some strange homes, just to get revenge.
Let's talk about that.
♪ (theme music) ♪
- Good Mythical Morning. - Revenge is a dangerous thing.
It can consume your life, especially if it involves building a home in order to
- get said revenge. Today, we are - Mm.
gonna talk about "spite homes." Yes, there are people who have invested time,
energy, and money into constructing a permanent domicile just to exact...
- Domicile! - …revenge on someone else.
And we're gonna go through some of the most famous ones.
There's some really ridiculous results when you really try to get the best of
somebody via a home. Right off the bat, in 1952, Virginia City, Nevada, neighbors...
- That's confusing. - …um, got in a dispute.
- Just being in Virginia City in Nevada. - Right.
- They were probably just upset about… - "Where are we?! What state?! What city."
So they got upset about that. They were confused; they didn't know where
they were, and they started taking it out on each other. One guy built a house;
the other guy bought the lot right next to it and built his house right there to
block the view and the breeze. 12 inches away. That's literally how close --
- (Link) look at that! -- his house is - (Rhett) A foot. Ha.
from the other house. This is a classic spite home, and they're both there to this
day. People live in both homes, and they're not actually angry with each other.
But you've gotta ask yourself: if you're angry at a dude, and then
you build the house a foot from his house, YOUR house is also a foot from his house.
You know what I'm saying? You're a foot from each other.
That's his level of spite. But I think he built it that close so he could just
reach out and choke the guy when he was like brushin' his teeth.
- Okay. - (choking sound)
This one, the Alameda spite house, has less to do with a dispute between two
neighbors and is more a dispute between a man and a town.
- Oh, really. - At the turn of the 20th century,
there was a guy named Charles Froling, and he was planning to build his dream
house on this lot that he had. But lo and behold, the city decided, "We gotta put a
street through there!" And I guess this was in the days where they would
just kinda do this without asking. So they put a street through his lot, or basically
took up most of his lot. And out of spite, he build a house that was 10 feet deep
and 54 feet long. You can see it right here.
(Link) It looks like it's teetering over the street, as if to say,
"If you choose to drive here, my house could fall on you to teach you a lesson."
- I mean, that's spite. - He kinda gets out over the
street. And I gotta -- again, is it worth it? Because he wanted to build his
dream house. This is now his dream house? I mean, this is the kind of thing where
maybe if his dream is to constantly be in that situation where you are walking and
another person's walking and you don't know which way to go, if that's his idea
of a dream, that probably happens all the time in this house.
No, this totally makes sense to me. I mean, have you ever been having a dream
and you woke up in the middle of it?
- (scoffs) I don't understand. - It was a… it was a half of a dream.
- House. - Ohhh!
- You really didn't understand? - No.
I just thought you thought is was like, such cheesy joke that you were...
- ...gonna let me off the hook. - I get it now.
"I don't understand. I know it couldn't have been a cheesy joke."
- Did y'all get that joke? - Um, let's a take a trip to Boston,
- shall we? 44 Hull Street: - Chase didn't get it.
a four-story house squished between two apartment buildings. Look at this thing.
it is indeed the skinniest house in Boston. The outside dimensions range
from 10.4 -- that's 3.2 meters -- and it tapers in the back down to 9.25 feet --
- 2.82 meters -- in the rear. - It's a pie shape.
Inside, the narrowest it gets is 6.2 feet across.
- I couldn't even have a bed in there. - I could not extend...
I have to be in the fetal position just to sleep.
… my arms, 'cause I'm six-foot tall. Here's the story behind this one.
Back in 1874, two brothers are having it out with one another. The father dies,
and they're given a plot of land. One son goes off and to do some… into the military
while the other son stays home and builds his house on the majority of the property.
Just takes basically all of it for himself.
Lemme guess: he leaves about, eh… 10 feet or so.
10 point somethin' feet. Yeah, so his brother comes back, has no other
inheritance, and says, "You know, well, I'm gonna build my sliver of a home
right here." Just to spite his brother. Or re-spite his brother.
Funny thing is, the only house that remains is the spite house.
(Rhett) Right, those are like apartment buildings on either side of it.
(Link) They build apartments around it, but the spite house endured,
- and an architect lives in it now. - Well, that's the thing: what once was
a spite house is now the cool house to have your business in.
Well, no. He and his wife and their four-year-old daughter live in the house,
and then in the backyard, people will just come in there and start taking photos.
"Oh, I'll be out in a second. Just let me take a few photos," like it's a
tourist destination. That's what they say.
- They should charge for it. - They should charge for it!
I have a brother. He's never been in the military, but if he ever goes off in the
military, I'm gonna go on his property and build a little...
- A huge house. - …No, I build the big house.
- Yeah, there. Right. (laughing) - I gotta get this straight.
- I gotta get this plan straight. - Don't start with the spite house first.
Okay, sometimes it's not just about building a house, but it's about
- modifying your house out of spite. - Okay.
So back in 2001 in Lubbock, Texas, there was a city ordinance that was instituted
that prohibited more than two unrelated people living in the same house.
You know how it is: college town. Lubbock, Texas, is a college town.
You had these houses with multiple people living in them. Apparently, there's like a
college situation where they're causing a lot of trouble, and so the city decides to
pass this ordinance where you can't have more than two people who are related to
each other, so that basically means these big college houses are outta luck.
- Right. - So they issue this citation,
and then they enforce it on this one house in Lubbock, where incidentally, one of the
students who lived there was named Brain Bosworth. This is not the Brain Bosworth
from the 1980s who played in the NFL and was also in the 1991 movie Cold Stone, and
had an incredible mullet and, uh… flattop combination.
- (Link) He had a spite haircut. - He was amazing.
He had that haircut just to spite everyone who looked at it.
- Really? - Yeah, that's how bad it was.
It all comes full-circle. But this wasn't him.
So they wanted to all live together. They weren't allowed to,
- so what did they do? - So the landlord, out of spite,
paints the house purple. You might say, "Okay, that's not that big of a deal."
But then she paints black polka dots on it. And then she paints yellow polka dots
on it. And then she makes smiley faces on some of the polka dots.
- (Link) It's like the house has a disease. - (Rhett laughing)
- She ends up backing down, unfortunately. - Oh no, really?
She was having some health issues, and the town was giving her the runaround,
so she ends up backing out of this thing and repaints the house. So she
kinda gave up, but it was cool while it lasted: the polka dot house.
I'll bring it back up with another polka bot house. Stan Pike had a nice home in
Avondale Estates in Georgia. You're heard of Avondale Estates.
- Oh, yes. They have estates there. - I hadn't heard of it, but I actually
Street Viewed it. That's how committed I am to research for you guys. And, you
know what? It's a pretty nice neighborhood. But he wanted to build a...
Usually that's a trailer park, just so you know. Like, "Avondale Estates" is usually
- a trailer park in North Carolina. - Right, that's why I Street Viewed it.
- It is like a nice neighborhood. - Okay.
The guy wanted to build a nice, rounded porch on the rounded edge of his house,
kinda like a wrap-around porch. He was denied by the local historic preservation
commission, who said the porch didn't fit the neighborhood's look.
- I guess a historic… um... - What?
- Wasn't historical enough. - …neighborhood?
"That wrap-around porch is not historical!"
So instead of putting up the wrap-around porch in protest, he instead paints his
house this lime-green-yellowish color and puts purple polka dots on it.
Apparently people think polka dots are very offensive. I kinda like 'em.
- They're not good for a house. - I mean, look at my shirt.
i mean, they make historic preservation commissions really upset. The cool thing
is, all of the neighbors, they got behind him. They started putting purple dots on
- their homes. Victory! - Oh. Maybe it WAS contagious.
- For the spite home. Yeah. (laughing) - (stammering) Houses got measles.
The mayor overruled the decision, and he was allowed to create his wrap-around
- porch. So he repainted his house. - (applause)
Positivity from a spite home. There we go.
Okay, this one, I think, is the coolest of all. In 2006 in Seattle, developers were
building a shopping mall, and there was some houses there they needed to get
- rid of. They bought everybody out. - Sure, sure.
And there was this one woman. They offered one million dollars to
- Edith Macefield for her... - So one million dollars to eat it.
- Eat what? - …1000-square-foot home.
- That's a pretty good deal. - Okay? Small home.
She refused to leave because she had been livin' in there for 50 years.
And so what did they do? They built the mall around her house.
(Link) Oh, man. They did everything but build over top of it.
If you're a fan of a move called Up by Pixar, you might know this is exactly
what happens in that movie. It is said -- it hasn't been confirmed -- but it is
suspected that this is the inspiration for Up. That explains why during the...
promotion for the movie Up, they actually put balloons on the house.
(Link) Well, in fairness, they didn't put enough balloons.
- They undersold their own movie. - Well they don't want the house
to actually go up in the air. You saw Up, didn't ya? That's what happens,
- brother, when ya do that. - Good point, brother.
But there's a really cool story here between the relationship that she
had with the guy who was actually building mall. He wrote a book about what he
learned from her, and he ended up buying the house from her after she died...
Or she gave the house to him after she died of cancer.
- (Link) Hm! - And then somebody else bought it,
and now it's foreclosed on, but newsflash! It's up for auction. You can go and buy
this house right now, and Link, I think you should.
There's a Trader Joe's like literally 10 feet from it.
- (laughing) In the mall. - (laughing) And there's a 24-Hour Fitness
- like 10 feet from it also. - I'll weigh my options. But guys,
put away the revenge. Come on. Let's channel positivity into polka dots
- on other things, okay? - Positivity into polka dots.
Thanks for liking and commenting on this video.
You know what time it is.
- Hi, my name's Alyssa. - And I'm Talia.
- And I'm Emma. - And we're from Oklahoma.
(unison) And it's time to spin The Wheel of Mythicality.
We are teaching you very important life lessons in two easy steps on our Twitter:
twitter.com/rhettandlink. You should check it out!
(high-pitched voice) Fo-llow us! Click through to Good Mythical More,
where we share our neighbor nightmare stories.
- Neighbor nightmare. - Throw in a little peeping tom story...
"Contemplating pit stains." Pit stains.
- ♪ (piano ballad) ♪ - (Link) Pit stains...
…never thought about those before. If I said it wrong by accident...
- ...it would be "sit pains." - (Rhett) Sit pains...
- …talkin' 'bout hemorrhoids? - (Link) That's what those are?
[Captioned by Kevin: GMM Captioning Team]