Wednesday, February 5, 2025

The skinniest house in America

The skinniest house in the U.S. is a historic "spite house."

U.S. History

I n 1830, brickmaker John Hollensbury lived in a handsome two-story home in what's now the Old Town district of Alexandria, Virginia. He had one small problem, however. There was an alley about 7.5 feet wide running down one side; horse-drawn carriages would try to squeeze through and end up scraping against his wall, and loiterers would mill about in the area. Hollensbury's drastic solution? Fill in the alley with a very, very small house to spite the riffraff outside.

This is how the Alexandria Spite House was born — not to create something, but to take something away. But regardless of Hollensbury's motivations, he built a cute, functional, two-story home, albeit one that's wedged in so tight that the neighbors' exterior brick walls serve as its interior walls. It stretches around 25 feet back into the alley, and has a 325-square-foot interior spread out over two stories. The first floor has a sitting area and a small kitchen. Upstairs, there's a small bedroom and bathroom with a clawfoot tub.

The diminutive home's creature comforts are ample enough that people have used it as a long-term primary residence. One couple even lived there for the better part of 25 years. The most recent owner purchased it in 1990 for $130,000; as of 2008, he used it as a pied à terre.

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By the Numbers

Historic homes built in alleys in Alexandria, Virginia

Width (in inches) of the Keret House in Warsaw, Poland

Did you know?

Two 5-foot-wide "spite houses" were built in New York City.

In New York City in 1882, construction of Lexington Avenue had split some lots into itty-bitty pieces. One corner lot at 82nd Street, owned by eccentric developer Joseph Richardson, was just 5 feet wide and 100 feet long. When the owners of the adjacent lot decided to build apartment homes there, they offered Richardson $1,000 for the lot. He countered with $5,000, and the other party decided to not buy the parcel — after all, they thought, what could Richardson even build there that could block their residents' views? Unfortunately for them, Richardson called their bluff and built two 50-foot-long, 5-foot-wide houses right along the eastern wall, and even moved into one himself. Richardson died in 1887, and the buildings — the two spite houses and the apartment building next to them — were demolished in 1915.