Spite house
A spite house is a building constructed or substantially modified to irritate neighbors or any party with land stakes.
Spite houses may deliberately obstruct light or block access to neighboring buildings, or might be flagrant symbols of defiance.
[3] For example, the Coty v. Ramsey Associates, Inc. case of 1988 ruled that the defendant's spite farm constituted a nuisance, granting the neighboring landowner a negative easement.
[7] In 1806, Thomas McCobb, heir to his father's land and shipbuilding business, returned home to Phippsburg, Maine, from sea to discover that his stepbrother Mark had inherited the family "Mansion in the Wilderness".
[8] The National Park Service's Historic American Buildings Survey photographed and documented the 1925 move of the McCobb Spite House by barge from Phippsburg to Deadman's Point in Rockport, Maine.
[9][10][11] In 1814, John Tyler, an ophthalmologist and one of the first American-born physicians to perform a cataract operation, owned a parcel of land near the courthouse square in Frederick, Maryland.
[12] To spite the city, Tyler immediately had workmen pour a building foundation, which was discovered by the road crews the next morning.
[12][13] In 1830, John Hollensbury's home in Alexandria, Virginia, was one of two houses that directly bordered an alley that attracted an annoying amount of horse-drawn wagon traffic and loiterers.
[15] When the soldier returned, he found his inheritance depleted and built a wooden house at 44 Hull St. to spite his brother by blocking the sunlight and ruining his view.
[17] Schilling sold three-quarters of an acre of this land, on which a house eventually was built and became owned by James Falloon.
[21] After the owner died, his heirs agreed in 1898 to have the Salem Spite House torn down to avoid a "vexatious lawsuit with the obnoxious neighbor".
[22] To spite his neighbor, the butcher built between their adjoining houses a narrow, two-story structure with windows covered by Venetian blinds.
[24] At the turn of the 20th century, the city of Alameda, California, took a large portion of Charles Froling's land to build a street.
In 1904, the family of a deceased Joseph Edleston owned a plot of land next to the churchyard of St. Mary's in Gainford, England.
[27] Feeling slighted, the family immediately set about building themselves a house on their land with a 40-foot (12 m) column erected next to the churchyard so it towered over the trees.
[32][33] In 1925, according to one common story, a Montlake, Seattle, Washington neighbor made an insultingly low offer for a tiny slice of adjoining land.
Out of revenge, she had her high-rise building built between the Anchorena's palace and the church the family had erected on the opposing side of the adjoining square.
[37] In 1954, a thin wedge-shaped building was erected by architects Salah and Fawzi Itani on a 120 sq m plot in Beirut, Lebanon at the request of a man wanting to spoil the sea view of his brother after they failed to agree to jointly develop their neighboring plots.
[38] Film producer George Lucas had wanted to construct a movie studio on land that he owned in Marin County, California.
While some sources have speculated that the low-income housing proposal was to spite the high-income residents in the wealthy county,[39] Lucas himself rejected that characterization.
The humanitarian charity Planting Peace purchased a house across the street from the church and, in 2013, had it painted to match the colors of the rainbow pride flag.
