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12 Comments to "The House(s) That Spite Built"
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Nate
April 25th, 2008 at
10:12 am
ooh! I want to build a spite house! I’d purchase a piece of property in West Des Moines, the height of suburbia, (Stacy knows what I’m talking about) and build the most modest house, drive my electric car and all of my landscaping (including the grass) would be natural prairie grass.
haa haa have at you suburbs!
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chelly
April 25th, 2008 at
11:01 am
the “V” sign on the house in england is probably for the British equivalent of the middle finger. In war times when they used to capture enemy archers (usually of french origin) they would cut off one of the fingers they would use to draw a bowstring. Then when they would see archers who had suffered the misfortune of being caught they would show them that they still had both their fingers. So to this day instead of using the middle finger they often give a reversed peace sign with the back of the hand facing the person they’re being rather rude to.
Thats my guess on the V at least ;]
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Alannah
April 25th, 2008 at
11:10 am
I’d like to build a spite wall. I have an small house on the side of our yard that’s been broken up into apartments. The owner uses the apartments for those people he feels need help becoming Christians. So, we’ve got devil worshipers, drug addicts, Wiccans (I actually liked them, they did some great landscaping) and people fresh from jail going in and out of the apartments. I applaud the guys ethic, but he gets robbed blind every other month, and as far as I know, not one of these people has ever ‘turned the other cheek’ for him. I want a nine concrete and razor wire wall all around my property. Just for spite.
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Christophe
April 25th, 2008 at
2:07 pm
If you don’t have room for a spite house, you still can be an annoyance:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21365321-13762,00.html -
fsmarch
April 25th, 2008 at
2:16 pm
I don’t know if this is pushing the definition of a spite dwelling a bit, but here goes:
In Manhattan, around 30 years ago, a developer wanted to build a skyscraper, in the east 50’s. All of the owners of small buildings on the block sold out, except one.
The corporation tried throwing mega dollars at the building owner, but they refused to leave, so they built their skyscraper AROUND the small house.
Eventually, the owner died, and the house was torn down, and the grounds of the skyscraper completed. You can only imagine how many millions that person’s stubborness cost the corporation.
I used to laugh when I walked past that little house standing in the way of a corporation. God bless the American spirit!
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Lore
April 25th, 2008 at
3:57 pm
People being stubborn. I love it.
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drmeowmix
April 25th, 2008 at
5:44 pm
Chelly- While you’re most likely right about what the “v” means, the origin you give for the middle finger is actually apocryphal.
I do a lot of things out of spite, I’ll have to add building a house to my list.
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raincoaster
April 25th, 2008 at
8:04 pm
The narrowest building in the world (according to the Guinness Book) is a spite office building in Vancouver, the Sam Kee building. The city expropriated almost all of Sam Kee’s property to widen Pender Street (then Dunlop street, I believe) but left him a six-foot-deep lot so they didn’t have to pay him fair market value for the whole lot. So he built a building exactly six feet wide.
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the robot child
April 25th, 2008 at
8:55 pm
this is why i go on neatorama. Now when i talk to people i’ll sound so educational!
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fsmarch
April 25th, 2008 at
10:55 pm
@ raincoaster:
I think the building you mention was in neatorama a few weeks ago.
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stormie24
May 3rd, 2008 at
8:20 pm
hahaha, there’s one in Toronto Ontario too! except it’s not a spite house…it’s a why-not-build-something-here house.
http://www.thelittlehouse.ca/page1.aspx -
little gator
May 7th, 2008 at
6:00 pm
The ancient Romans used the middle finger the same way we do now.
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