12 Quirky Houses Built Purely Out of Spite

Have a tiff with a neighbor? Here are 10 examples of people throughout history who decided to solve their conflicts by building a spite house in retaliation.



The Old Spite House

We've heard of people buying airspace in order to not have their views obstructed, but what if someone purposely blocked the view from a window of your home? Enter the spite house. If you haven't heard of the phenomenon before, spite houses are homes or other structures built to annoy a neighbor or family member, block a view, or challenge a zoning law—an idea that is believed to have originated in the early 1700s.

This postcard from 1912 depicts the The Old Spite House, the home of the Graves brothers, two fisherman from Marblehead, Massachusetts, that supposedly lived in different sections of the home because they refused to sell the house to the other.