Spite house

A spite house is a building constructed or substantially modified to irritate neighbors or any party with land stakes. Because long-term occupation is not the primary purpose of these houses, they frequently exhibit strange and impractical structures.

Spite houses may deliberately obstruct light, block access to neighboring buildings, or be flagrant symbols of defiance. Spite house are a particularly local kind of hostile architecture meant to annoy/irritate a particular person.

Although, in the US, homeowners generally have no right to views, light, or air, neighbors can sue for a negative easement. In instances regarding a spite build, courts are far more likely to side with the neighboring parties which may have been affected by that build. For example, the Coty v. Ramsey Associates, Inc. case of 1988 ruled that the defendant's spite farm constituted a nuisance, granting the neighboring landowner a negative easement.

Spite houses, as well as spite farms, are considerably rarer than spite fences. This is partially because modern building codes often prevent the construction of houses likely to impinge on neighbors' views or privacy, but mostly because fence construction is far cheaper, quicker, and easier than building construction. There are also similar structures known as spite walls or blinder walls.

In certain jurisdictions, construction of spite houses or spite fences is considered abuse of rights. In some countries, like Finland, it is explicitly prohibited by law.

In 1716, Thomas Wood, a sailmaker, built a house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, that subsequently became known as the Old Spite House. One possibility is that it was inhabited by two brothers who occupied different sections, would not speak to each other, and each refused to sell to the other. Another explanation is that the ten-foot-wide (3 m) house, just tall enough to block the view of two other houses on Orne Street, was built because its owner was upset about his tiny share of his father's estate and therefore decided to spoil his older brothers' views. The Old Spite House is still standing and occupied.

In 1806, Thomas McCobb, heir to his father's land and shipbuilding business, returned home to Phippsburg, Maine, from sea to discover that his stepmother had inherited the family "Mansion in the Wilderness". Upset about his loss, McCobb built a house directly across from the McCobb mansion to spite his stepmother. The National Park Service's Historic American Buildings Survey photographed and documented the 1925 move of the McCobb Spite House by barge from Phippsburg to Deadman's Point in Rockport, Maine.

In 1814, John Tyler, an ophthalmologist and one of the first American-born physicians to perform a cataract operation, owned a parcel of land near the courthouse square in Frederick, Maryland. The city made plans to extend Record Street south through Tyler's land to meet West Patrick Street. In fighting the city, Tyler discovered a local law that prevented the building of a road if work was in progress on a substantial building in the path of a proposed road. To spite the city, Tyler immediately had workmen pour a building foundation, which was discovered by the road crews the next morning.