New England has an unusual number of surviving spite houses, buildings constructed not for practical reasons but to make a specific neighbor’s life worse. The tradition predates the United States. At least three examples built in Massachusetts are still standing and occupied today, all within an hour of Boston.
The oldest is the Old Spite House in Marblehead, built in 1716 by a sailmaker named Thomas Wood. The house is ten feet wide. One version of the story has two brothers each occupying half the structure and refusing to speak to or sell to each other. Another holds that Wood built it specifically to block a neighbor’s view after feeling cheated in an inheritance dispute. Both stories may be true. Three centuries later, someone still lives there.
The most famous is the Skinny House at 44 Hull Street in Boston’s North End, built in 1874. Two brothers inherited land from their father. While one served in the Civil War, the other built a substantial home on most of the lot. When the soldier returned, the remaining strip measured 10.4 feet wide at its widest point, narrowing to 9.25 feet at the rear. He built a four-story wooden house on it anyway, oriented to block his brother’s light and view. The building still stands. Tourists photograph it regularly without knowing the backstory.
The O’Reilly Spite House in Cambridge was built in 1908. Francis O’Reilly wanted to purchase a strip of land from his neighbor for an investment project. The neighbor said no. O’Reilly responded by building a 308-square-foot structure on his existing property: 37 feet long, 8 feet wide, positioned to block any productive use of the adjacent land. As recently as 2009 the building housed a business.
There was also a spite house in Salem, Massachusetts, constructed before 1898 and designed to cut off a neighbor’s view. After the owner died, his heirs had it demolished to head off anticipated litigation from the affected neighbor. It is the only one of the four that did not survive.
What produced this particular tradition in New England is not entirely mysterious. Colonial-era property laws placed significant weight on private ownership with minimal regard for what that ownership did to surrounding parcels. Zoning as a concept barely existed until the early twentieth century. Combined with the region’s documented history of land disputes, inheritance conflicts, and what one historian of New England character called “a profound reluctance to be seen to lose,” the conditions were favorable.
FAQ
What is a spite house? A spite house is a structure built primarily to inconvenience, block, or annoy another person, rather than to serve the builder’s practical needs. Common tactics include blocking a neighbor’s view, stealing their light, or making their property less usable or less valuable.
Are New England spite houses open to visit? The Skinny House at 44 Hull Street in Boston and the Old Spite House in Marblehead are both private residences visible from public sidewalks. Neither is a tourist attraction in the organized sense, but both are findable and photographable. The O’Reilly Spite House in Cambridge is also still standing.
Were spite houses legal to build? Generally yes. As long as the builder owned the land and met applicable setback requirements, the motivation for building was legally irrelevant. You cannot be stopped from building on your own land simply because your neighbor finds it annoying.
Could someone build a spite house today? It is significantly harder. Modern zoning codes, setback requirements, design review boards, and neighbor notification processes create obstacles that did not exist in 1716 or even 1908. A sufficiently determined property owner in a jurisdiction with minimal design review might still manage it, but the permitting process itself would likely constitute most of the spite.
Do spite houses have any value as real estate? Several have sold at prices well above what the square footage alone would command, driven primarily by notoriety. The Skinny House in Boston has been listed and sold multiple times. Unusual provenance, it turns out, is its own kind of curb appeal.
Are there spite houses outside New England? Yes. The Hollensbury Spite House in Alexandria, Virginia, is 7 feet wide and 325 square feet. A spite house in Alameda, California, built in the early 1900s is 10 feet deep and 54 feet long. The phenomenon appears wherever strong private property rights, minimal zoning, and personal grievances overlap, which is most places in the United States at some point in history.