Homeowners Who Spent A Fortune Just for Revenge

it's not uncommon for warring neighbors to erect fences or cut down trees just to get on each other's nerves but what happens when someone has enough time money and malice to use construction as revenge coming up or some of the pettiest homeowners who took vengeance to the next level devious divorcee take a look at this quaint little house in Newport Massachusetts with its baby pink paintwork adorable chimney and generous conservatory you'd be forgiven for thinking this home was a total labor of love you'd be wrong no because the Plum Island pink house was born out of pure hatred divorce is rarely pretty and both parties don't always get what they want but one woman got more than she bargained for during a particularly nasty settlement in 1925 the story goes that the woman in question agreed to sign the divorce papers on one condition that her husband built her an exact replica of their current home her husband obliged happily realizing that his soon-to-be ex-wife had forgotten to specify exactly where the house should be which presented an irresistible revenge opportunity he fulfilled his ex-wife's wish and an exact replica of her beloved home was painstakingly created but it was plunked in the middle of the desolate marshland of Plum Island not only was the house completely isolated from everyone and everything but her ex-husband dished out an extra scoop of revenge by hooking the plumbing up to water saltier than he was unsurprisingly the unfortunate woman never moved in which was probably for the best considering how much has best dose let pain and raid on it contained arguably the dangers of such things were known back then but I like to think it was all in the name of good ol spite a woman scorned they say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and that's especially true in the case of this monumental building in Buenos Aires which was erected just so one woman could stand back and appreciate the true beauty of revenge sometime in the early 1930s Corinna Cavanaugh a self-made American millionaire who made her riches from property deals fell in love with the son of Argentinean bigwig Mercedes Castellanos de anchorena the aristocratic anchorena family didn't exactly approve of their son marrying a woman who came from new money so they pressured him into breaking off the engagement instead of just drowning her sorrows in a tub of Ben and Jerry's Cavanaugh decided to put her real estate cunning to good use the anchorena has lived in a decadent local palace called the son martin plaza and they'd recently built a private family church across the road named the Holy Sacrament Basilica in 1936 Cavanaugh instructed an architect to design a skyscraper with the sole purpose of blocking the anchoring his view of their own church she sold three cattle ranches to fund the scheme and within 14 months the Cavanaugh building was born at one point that 33 floor Art Deco structure was the tallest building in South America and I can't be the only one who thinks it looks like a giant concrete middle finger right revenge is sweeter than candy anyone lucky enough to own a piece of prime real estate in London swanky Kensington neighborhood is probably rich and the rich love nothing more than keeping up appearances on one row of hottie townhouses there's a bizarre anomaly to this rule which puts the rest of the street to shame the candy-striped house thankfully this Girish paint job isn't just a questionable style choice but a delightfully petty way to ruffle the neighbors feathers the property's owner Zipporah lau Mainwaring defies the monstrous makeover after plans to demolish and rebuild the six million dollar house were denied by snooty neighbors in 2015 the naysayers quickly realized their mistake presumably after they kept having to wear sunglasses while passing by the literal eyesore and turned to the council for help who ordered la Mainwaring to repaint it light these efforts fell on deaf ears though and lau Mainwaring took her opponents to court instead after a two-year battle she won the right to demolish the property and build her dream home and in 2019 that candy stripe house was flattened to make way for its replacement while Maine wearing now plans to embark on an ambitious rebuild involving a wildly over-the-top super basement fitted with a private gym cinema and an underground swimming pool needless to say our neighbors remain gloriously displeased frenemies forever they say to keep your friends close and your enemies even closer but would you really want to move in to order your worst nemesis believe it or not the reason why these otherwise adorable houses in Nevada are located so uncomfortably close to each other comes down to a tale of deep-rooted rivalry in the 1950s there were two silver miners who couldn't stand each other they hated each other so much that when one bought a desirable plot of land in Virginia City and built his dream home there the other went ahead and bought up the plot right next door hell-bent on making his enemy's life a misery for as long as he lived there the spiteful miner then relocated his existing home inch-by-inch so that it butted right up against his foes new bill blocking any sunlight decreasing the property's value and ruining the view in the process now positioned just 12 inches apart these awkward abodes are the architectural equivalent of being squashed up against a stranger on a busy public transport little slice of hell on first glance this doesn't look like a house at all but rather some sort of swanky garden shed take a wander around the other side though and you'll be astonished to find that this property in Seattle Washington is actually a pretty sizable abode the best way to get a real understanding of this TARDIS like home is to view it from above which reveals how its earned its name the Montlake pie house at its largest point the house is 15 feet wide tapering down to a mere 55 inches at the other end then the best part it was built entirely out of spite there are a couple of conflicting stories about the origins of this bizarre creation the first is that during a bitter divorce settlement in 1925 an ex-wife was given a tiny portion of land in the front yard of her former home and decided to make the most of her lot in life all 860 square foot of it another centers around a neighborly dispute which arose when the land owner was offered a pathetic amount of money by a neighbor to expand their garden to prove their disapproval the landowner decided to squeeze the tiny house on the plot of land forcing the offending neighbor to relocate one thing's for sure either way spite is the cement that holds this quirky property together the pie house is surprisingly spacious inside and in 2016 it even sold for a whopping 500 thousand dollars scandal while at sea the McCobb spite house now located at Rockport Maine is one of America's oldest Speight houses and it has a back story worthy of a 19th century soap opera and 1774 James McCabe built a handsome federal period house and Phipps burg for his second wife where the pair raised their three children together including their son Thomas McKay when James McAfee I'd Thomas who had become a sea captain returned to his former home to find that his new stepmother had moved her own family the hills into the house this was against his father's written will so Thomas resolved to avenge the family name and spite his stepmother in the process by building an even bigger better mansion right next door which overshadowed its counterpart ironically Thomas McCobb never married or produced any heirs so when he died ownership of the colonial mansion was transferred back to the very people it was built despite ironically the original house was destined to reclaim its original glory because the historic McCobb spine house was eventually relocated to dead man's point in Rockport Maine in 1925 brotherly betrayal the skinny house at Boston Massachusetts is the narrowest home in the city with a petite width of just 10.4 feet but it's also an abode drenched and hatred and betrayal according to local legend it all began when two brothers inherited a generous plot of land from their father after he died during the Civil War when one of the brothers returned from also serving in the war he discovered that his sibling had already built a large house on their shared land leaving him a mere ribbon of soil determined to have the last laugh the scorned brother erected the tiny house and what is basically an enclosed alleyway knowing that it would block any sunlight and ruin his brother's view the House has been occupied since 1884 and it's surprisingly spacious on the inside and a kitschy can away and 2017 the skinny house even sold for a cool $900,000 I guess there's some value in throwing your sibling under the bus after all miracle diversion this grand Victorian mansion in the booming village of Freeport New York boasts seven bedrooms and a wraparound porch fit for a sweet old lady in Iraq and chair but its most unique selling point is that it was built specifically to be a poetic thorn in someone else's side back in 1906 local developer John Randle discovered that a rival developer planned to arrange the village into a tidy grid system and decided that those plans must be thwarted rumor has it this hulking home was then erected virtually overnight earning it the name miracle house on the most Awkward triangular plot of land possible that would surely haunt the extension of the already developing grid as a result the neatly arranged grid system was made to fork either side of the house on the corner of Lena Avenue and Wilson place royally messing up Randall's rivals plans nowadays the house is a strange outlier and an otherwise normal looking neighborhood and Randall's legacy lives on when was the last time your hatred was so strong it caused actual streets to divert room for to behold the Almeida spite house in the San Francisco Bay Area which looks like it's fallen from the sky and landed awkwardly between the road and someone else's home the perpetrator of this crime of pure pettiness was carpenter Charles furling who had plans to build his dream house on a sizeable plot of land before the majority was seized by city planners in the 1900s unfortunately for furling the growing city of Almeida demanded a street to be built on a large chunk of his land leaving him a mere 10 by 54 foot patch instead of just swallowing his pride and taking his plans elsewhere Rowling did what any logical person would do in this situation and channeled his time and money into a building project which would stand as a symbolic screw you to the street that dashed his dreams sure enough furlings new abode landed right on his remaining sliver measuring 20 feet high 54 feet long in just 10 feet wide you might assume that the poor neighbor was just collateral damage in this architectural nightmare but the Almeida spite house actually targets two fronts at once you see froning's would-be neighbor was an avid supporter of the new Street and allegedly even helped pave it himself to ensure this neighbor regretted their betrayal Rowling built his house just tall enough to block out any remaining sunlight and made it so uncomfortably close that you'd never want to under the curtains and fear of seeing something you shouldn't the grudge holding a grudge is supposed to be bad for your health and when you start building revenge houses instead of just learning to let things go you should probably accept that you have a problem on first glance this over thin building in Beirut Lebanon seems more like a mere wall than a home but it is actually habitable with its widest point measuring around 13 feet and its narrowest just 2 feet locals have named the bizarre structure al basa which literally translates as The Grudge and in so long standing history is a reminder of just how deep sibling rivalry can run sometime in the 1950s two siblings inherited a sizable portion of land from their father but couldn't agree on what to build on it to make matters worse during all the squabbling a portion of the land was cruelly chopped off by various municipal infrastructure projects leaving the remaining section oddly shaped and infuriatingly close to the roadside fortunately one of the brothers already owned a large property just behind the land parcel only furthering how cheated his sibling felt by the whole ordeal to prove his pettiness the scorned man erected a 120 square foot building which would block his brothers million-dollar view of the ocean for as long as they lived according to local law the lad is too small to build anything else on so the grudge has remained ever since acting as a spiteful barrier to the ocean beyond do you think any of these petty homeowners were justified in their actions and do you know of any other famous Speight houses let me know in the comments below and thanks for watching [Music]

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Keywords: beamazed, be amazed, top 10, best revenge, petty, pettiest, homeowners, revenge, best revenge story, hilarious, funny, best revenge moments, hilarious revenge, funny revenge

Id: IZdLS8B7ABg

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2020