Meet the People Who Build Ugly Houses Just to Get Revenge

hey 42 here some people believe you can't hold a grudge forever other people however are happy to not only hold a grudge but to build and live inside one for the rest of their miserable lives these brick and mortar grudges are known as spite houses properties built for the sole purpose of annoying the neighbors as much as humanly possible when star wars creator george lucas announced he was building 52 acres worth of affordable community housing in marin county california one of the richest parts of the usa people saw it as yet another example of his well-known philanthropy but was it only a month before his plans to build a new film studio in the same location were scrapped due to local residents complaining about increased traffic and their very expensive views being ruined so when the housing project was announced the mega rich locals were even more appalled claiming it would bring crime to the area and lower property values this inevitably led to speculation george hadn't started the project purely out of the goodness of his heart but for a reason even more satisfying than housing the needy revenge and lucas isn't the only person to have engaged in a spot of architectural revenge it's unclear exactly when spider houses and their close relatives spite fences first came into being but we can be sure the concept stretches back a fair old way why well mostly because we human beings can be a real bunch of dicks when we feel like it especially to those people closest to us which is probably why siblings are so well represented in the world of spite houses take the jealous wall for example in the grounds of belvedere house in mullingar island the house was built in 1760 by the first earl of belvedere robert rochford after a quarrel with his brother george robert was so jealous of george's house next door he decided to build an artificial ruin of a non-existent abbey between the two properties the abbey served two purposes first it meant robert no longer had to set eyes on his brother's superior residence and second his brother had to put up with a great big pile of rubble in his back garden as you've probably gathered from this little stunt robert rochford was a bit of a git aside from the abbey he's mostly remembered today for locking his wife away in one of the family homes for more than 30 years after suspecting her of committing adultery but apparently karma does exist because it's thought he was eventually murdered by one of his many enemies another example of spite house sibling rivalry can be found in boston's skinny house built sometime in the 1870s like many spider houses the true story of why this ridiculously narrow home was built in the first place has been lost to history but according to boston legend two brothers inherited the land on which to house his build from their father just before one of them went off to fight in the civil war when the soldier finally made it home he not only found his brother had built himself a house but that he'd taken up almost the entire plot leaving behind a sliver of land roughly the size of a nat's penis and so out of sheer bloody mindedness the soldier decided to build his very own tiny house less than three meters wide at its narrowest point and nine meters deep completely blocking his brother's view and most of the available sunlight in the process the house is so narrow that it's some places an adult can touch both walls at the same time while standing inside but that hasn't stopped people living there even today the skinny house last went on sale in 2017. and was listed at just shy of nine hundred thousand dollars the skinny house is an absolute textbook spite house it's all about getting one up on the other guy no matter what even if you end up living in a stupid impractical house that your overweight friends can't even fit inside so are human beings just naturally vindictive well yes but then so are some animals spite has been observed in capuchin monkeys for example who found ways of punishing their fellow monkey friends even if it means a loss of food or resources for themselves and what are human beings at the end of the day if not a bunch of angry spiteful monkeys spite has even been studied in the microscopic world certain bacteria are quite happy to release toxins that attack and kill other bacteria even if it leads to their own death which is a bit more extreme than building a spider house i suppose but then bacteria aren't legally allowed to own property some researchers believe acts of spite can even be addictive they're mood changing consciousness altering stress reducing and generally make you feel better about distressing situations like oh i don't know being a genocidal iraqi dictator who's just lost a war to his biggest rival after saddam hussein's humiliating defeat in the gulf war he really threw his toys out of the pram by having a huge mosaic flaw in the shape of coalition leader george bush's face laid in an important baghdad hotel the reason so the general public could tread all over bush's western imperialist face which is considered quite a serious insult in arab culture when saddam's regime was toppled in 2003 however soldiers completely removed the portrait and replaced it with one of saddam himself possibly under orders of bush's son george w who'd always had a bit of an issue with the guy who wanted to stomp all over daddy's nose another common theme that crops up in the world of spite houses time and time again is divorce after all few things bring out the worst in human beings quite like the division of a dvd collection that was lovingly put together during a 20-year marriage the pink house of plum island is a prime example of post-marital spite the house was built in the 20s as a husband and wife are in the middle of separating but according to legend the wife would only grant the divorce if her husband agreed to build an exact duplicate of the family home for her to live in he agreed to the outlandish request surprisingly quickly and the wife was soon to understand why she'd forgotten to stipulate one thing the location of the new home the husband seized on the loophole deciding to build the house in the middle of an enormous salt marsh where it still stands to this day as a local icon far from any other human life or indeed running water the house is plumbed with the local utterly undrinkable unless you want to die salt water some studies have found that men demonstrate higher levels of spite than women it's unclear exactly why but apparently there's something in the male psyche that makes us a little more vindictive or as writer gore vidal puts it it's not enough for me to succeed others must fail but when women do decide to be spiteful they can make men look like rank amateurs we've all heard the phrase cutting off your nose to spite your face and according to the 1904 book a dictionary of saintly women it may have its origins with a group of 9th century nuns nuns who were brave enough to stick two fingers up at a group of people most of us wouldn't dare to cross the vikings as viking breeders attacked the scottish monastery of coldingham saint abe the younger cut off her own nose and upper lip inspiring her fellow nuns to do the same in order to avoid being raped seems extreme right but this was a pretty legitimate fear for a bride of christ after all these were vikings not chartered accountants and extreme it may well have been but it worked a treat the vikings were disgusted and the nuns chastity remained intact unfortunately the sexually frustrated raiders were so disgusted they chose to burn the disfigured nuns to death inside their abbey 1930s property millionaire karina cavanagh was another woman who knew how to dish out a good spiting despite her wealth carvanha was looked down upon by her fiance's family the ancarinas a bunch of old money aristocrats who lived in their very own palace in buenos aires complete with a private church they built nearby cavanaugh's fiancee was pressured into calling off their engagement so she decided to build a massive middle finger to her ex-potential in-laws in the shape of a 33-storey skyscraper called the cavana building once the tallest building in south america right in front of their family church psychological assessments have shown spitefulness correlates highly with psychopathy a personality disorder categorized by antisocial behavior lack of empathy and a bunch of other unpleasant egotistical traits all of which sound like a perfect description of whoever came up with the idea of connie mac's spide fence which was built around the sheep park baseball stadium in philadelphia around 90 years ago at the time owners of houses on parts of nearby somerset and 20th street had a fantastic view inside the ballpark from their rooms so much so they were able to sell tickets to a's fans who weren't able to get a seat in the stadium for games as many as 100 people could watch from the roof of each house to begin with team owner and manager connie mack the longest serving baseball manager in major league history and his partner ben sheeb lets these unofficial bleachers slide but when their own ticket sales began to suffer during the great depression in the 30s they decided enough was enough a 10 meter fence was built completely obscuring the view of the playing area from nearby houses in absolutely textbooks spite house fashion this unsightly erection was just as problematic for the philadelphia a's as it was for local residents not only was a huge corrugated iron fence and i saw it also made it much harder for the team's left-handed basses to hit home runs and the uneven surface made it difficult to predict bouncers in the field blocking a sought-after view is a popular motivator for builders of spite houses as was the case with the 1972 construction of mourinho crescent in dublin this row of 26 houses was built by local developer charles follett to get back at irish statesman james caulfield the first earl of charlemont the two had fallen out for reasons now lost to history but when foliate learnt how fonz the earl was of the view of dublin bay from one of his favorite summer pleasure houses the developer gleefully obscured it entirely by building a nice big row of houses in the way incidentally number 15 mourinho crescent would later become the birthplace of bram stoker author of one of the most famous novels ever written dracula spite houses are all about making a point even if doing so is enormously inconvenient and there's no more perfect illustration of that than in the proud chinese tradition of nail houses which take the general principles of spite houses and add a dash of all-out protest to the mix a nail house comes into being when a homeowner refuses to sell his property to developers looking to build things like highways or brand new housing complex either because he has no intention of moving or because of inadequate offers of compensation leading to bizarre instances of houses that appear to be in places they definitely shouldn't smack bang in the middle of a major road for instance in 2001 luo beowagen and his wife who were in their mid-60s at the time refused to move out of their house in eastern zhejiang province which led to the construction company in question simply building the road around it but these two plucky pensioners held their ground and photos of their now extremely well-connected nail house went viral after worldwide publicity of the farcical case the couple eventually accepted around forty thousand dollars in compensation and moved out the chong king nail house is another famous example that hit the headlines in 2014 when the owners yang woo and wu ping were told their family home was due to be demolished to make way for a shopping mall but yang and wu proved to be about as easy to remove as a red wine stain on a white carpet they turned down compensation ignored court orders and steadfastly refused to move leading to a three-year standoff during which the construction company not only cut off water and electricity to the building but also got medieval on their asses digging a 10-foot moat inches from the property nevertheless yang held the fort living in the house alone and relying on supplies passed up by a rope whilst wu took their story to the press once again the news went viral and in 2017 the family finally relented taking up the offer of a similar sized apartment elsewhere in the region although the nail house is now demolished with the much-hated shopping mall standing in its place yang and wu are still seen as unwitting folk heroes an inspiration to other chinese people who find themselves in similar situations so maybe spite can ultimately be used for the greater good even if that's not the driving force behind most spite houses after all researchers have called spite the neglected ugly sister of altruism and perhaps the most heartwarming example of this in recent times is aaron jackson's equality house the story of a quality house starts with the westboro baptist church who are very much not the kind of people you'd associate with the term heartwarming in fact they aren't even a real church the actual baptist don't want anything to do with them which isn't surprising because the westboro baptist church is attended by a group of particularly hateful individuals probably best known for their ongoing campaign against the lgbt community although they also aren't too fond of atheists jews muslims many other christians and basically anyone else who isn't one of their 70 odd members of their douchebag cult this general scummy behavior inspired jackson and his charity planting piece to buy a house across the street from the fake church's compound which they proceeded to paint in the rainbow colours of the pride flag over the years jackson has held a variety of protests and events in what became known as a quality house including a drag show a gay wedding and even a mock wedding between dumbledore and gandalf i don't envy whoever has to clean the hair out of the plughole in that relationship when the house next door to a quality house went up for sale in 2016 planting peas decided to buy that too once again giving it a multi-coloured paint job this time in honor of the transgender community despite occasional rays of hope like a quality house spite houses spied fences and spite in general is mostly about good old-fashioned vindictiveness but as gandhi once said an eye for an eye makes the world blind so wouldn't it be best if we could just let bygones be bygones and gave our sibling ex or neighbor a call so he could kiss and make up well let me leave you with this particularly inspiring story of someone trying to do just that in the late 1800s american industrialist henry frick was forced out of a business partnership by fellow mogul andrew carnegie and spent the rest of his life concocting various forms of revenge he even built his own spite house in new york a larger much grander mansion than carnegie's purposely located nearby to upstage his old rival finally however in 1919 as both men were suffering with ill health and nearing death carnegie reached out and sent his personal secretary to ask frick if they could meet up and put their differences behind them yes frick said after reading the letter you can tell carnegie i'll meet him tell him i'll see him in hell thanks for watching you can get your hands on my book stick a flag in it over on amazon or on audible links to both in the description below thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 724,048

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Id: -y39slhGX9w

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021