To spite his low-balling neighbor, Richardson not only refused to sell him the land, but he also built a structure just five feet wide on top of it to make it that much more unusable. He offered to buy the land from its owner, Joseph Richardson, but Richardson was offended by just how low Samer’s offer was. In 1882, a landowner named Hyman Samer decided he wanted to build some homes on land that he owned, but noticed a small strip of land between the two lots he owned. Though it’s been gone for quite some time, the Richardson Spite House is thought of as New York’s most famous one. It’s currently owned by the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge which, for now, has spared it from being demolished. The house still stands today and, although it’s filled with lead paint, asbestos, and radon, members of the community don’t want it torn down. However, she didn’t quite specify where the home should be built, and that’s where her husband got his revenge-by building it far away from everything she loved, in a place he thought would surely bring her sadness. The house, which as Bolick describes as a “lonely, unloved thing looming against a howling sky,” seems like a terrible house in a terrible place, but that was actually the reason why it was built in the first place.Īs the story goes, in 1925 a woman agreed to divorce her husband on the condition that he build her an exact replica of the home they owned together. In a 2015 essay published in The New York Times, writer Kate Bolick talked about a fantasy of hers that might seem pretty strange to most people: owning a derelict, baby-pink house sitting in the middle of a salt marsh with no running fresh water. The Plum Island Pink House-Newbury, Massachusetts Get ready for a visual history of America’s pettiness from coast to coast, because there’s a lot to cover when it comes to our nation’s most famous spite houses. Though the trend recently came into the spotlight because of one particular couple, it’s one that’s actually been around for quite some time. We’ve all heard of tiny houses and fixer-uppers, but have you ever heard of a spite house? They’re just what you might imagine: a home built just for the purpose of being spiteful to another person, like an annoying neighbor or ex-spouse. Have you ever wished you could plan out some grand, spiteful gesture to get back at someone who wronged you? Well, these people who actually did it are about to become your new idols.
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