March 16, 2023 • 43 mins
At its best, architecture is a kind of poetry made tangible, frozen in time for generations to come. But, as it turns out, architecture can also be a tremendous avenue for all sorts of less cool emotions: pettiness, spite, vengeance -- you name it. In the first part of this recurring series, Ben, Noel and Max explore the wide, surprising (and, frankly, ridiculous) world of spiteful architecture.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. We're here. We're live and direct, in
full effect with some architecture for you. And first off,
let's shout out the architect of our podcasts are what
an only superproducer, mister Max Williams. Woo. I liked you.
(00:50):
I liked your kind of classic radio dj en show.
They're live and in full effect with the architects than
our podcast set. Yeah, there we go. Let's keep it going.
Um yeah, yeah, So I'm Ben your Noel and Noel,
You and I might be I don't want to speak
for you, my friend, but we might be a little
punchy coming in today. What do you think. Yeah, it's
(01:11):
from all those children I was punching on the plane.
We wouldn't let it go. We were we were like
eternally because we hang out a lot, and we were
we were eternally in these social situations where if we're
not sitting right next to each other. Uh, Noel, you
and I are texting like kids passing notes in class. Yeah,
(01:32):
that's what texting is really, you know, the end of
the day. It's it's a modernized note passing. It was
funny too. We had a fla out from Austin. We
had a lovely time at south By Southwest meeting people,
doing panels, all that kind of stuff. And on the
plane back we had a genuine Marvel superhero on our flight. Yes, sir, yeah,
(01:55):
I think you were sitting somewhere different in the terminal
and I U I texted you because we were on
the same flight with two world famous celebrities, well one
very world famous celebrity, Anthony Mackie, who plays First Falcon
and now the new Captain America at Marvel Films. I
(02:16):
didn't know that he was the new Captain America. By
the way, that was a giant spoiler for the MCU
ben My bad, because I know you care so much,
but I don't care. I care enough to be part
of the conversation. Who was the second more important celebrity,
if I might ask, it was none other than if
we could get a drum roll Max or not a
(02:37):
drum roll A sinister. Yeah, there it is Jonathan Strickland,
aka the Quister, who really wanted us to know he
sat He was sitting in first class it was like
really insisted upon himself. Yeah, no, for sure, and I'm
(02:58):
just glad the plane made it. You know, the nefarious
plans didn't didn't cause some sort of in air catastrophe. Um,
but no, to be to be true, to be real,
let's let's do that for a second. Yeah, we were
actually we're actually really friends with Jonathan's strictly. We played
mini golf together. This wonderful like I think it had
been around since the forties or something that was called
(03:19):
like Peter Pan Mini Golf in Austin, and it's this
the kind of thing you think of. I think a
lot of our hometowns probably have places like this. For me,
it was called putt put golf and games where you
have these like waterfalls and you know, like giant elephant
sculptures and things made a concrete or some other you
know material. This place was all like down the rabbit
Hole kind of Alice in Wonderland, psychedelic rabbits and literally
(03:42):
rabbit holing vibes, creepy clowns. We did some cool social
shoots for stuff they don't want you to know, so
be on the lookout for those if those things exist. Yeah,
I think they're gonna work out. I felt pretty good
about them, you know, I felt like we I feel
like we were having fun. And fun is contagious, right,
hopefully still more contagious than COVID. We Uh, this is
(04:04):
what I was thinking. I'm really glad you brought this up, Noll,
because put Putt is purposely spiteful architecture, and our pal
research associate Jeff Bartlett has been obsessed with spiteful architecture
for a while. But what do we mean when we
(04:24):
talk about spite architecture? Is it what it sounds like?
I guess so. I mean, you know, well, in the
context of Putt PUTT, it's literally things obstructing your success,
you know, barriers to you thinking that that cute, little
multicolored ball into that hole. I think we all actually
did pretty well. But spite buildings are specifically pieces of
(04:47):
construction intended to irritate and in an act of protest.
So you know, I think we all hear love curb
your enthusiasm. There's a string of episodes in one of
the more recent seasons about us opening a spite or
because Larry has a beef with Mocha Joe for whatever reason,
I can't quite remember what. It doesn't matter because it's petty.
It's all about human pettiness that show. So he starts
(05:09):
another store next to him, another coffee shop. Thank it's
just called Larry's something maybe see like Larry's Mocha Joe.
I don't remember. It was something along those lines. And
he has like an absurd toilet or something in them.
But anyway, it's that's so, that's a spike. This architecture
is irrelevant there. It's more about the business itself. Here
we're talking about making human pettiness and all of that
(05:33):
stuff literally manifest through buildings. Yeah, the idea is that
you are going to you're going to get back at
someone in a lasting way. And we see spike architecture
around the world. It's one of those things where once
you recognize what it is, you will have an embarrassment
(05:55):
of riches when it comes to finding examples. A lot
of the origin stories of these edifices, these structures, these statues,
these buildings, a lot of them are you know, kind
of embellished. They become a selling point, especially if the
thing is a little older. But we're going to encounter
(06:15):
some amazing, ridiculous history here, we're talking spurned lovers, we're
talking feuds between siblings, and of course we're talking everybody's
favorite vengeance. Avengers are the architects of spite buildings sometimes
And there's something really interesting here from a great mental
(06:38):
philoss article called Houses Built out of Spite by Virginia
Claire McGuire, where the author notes, most towns haven't oddity
or two an architectural oddity, and it's the building locals
love to point out to visitors. This happens pretty often
in the United States, but it's everywhere in Europe, you
(07:02):
know what I mean. Like you you might drop by
for a pint or you're getting you know, you're getting
a snack, and then someone says, oh, this building was
built in you know, the thirteen hundreds, and it was
built because so and so was considered to be a
witch like you never know, well, I mean, you know,
certainly in the earlier days that you're talking about there,
(07:24):
it might have been easier to do one of these things,
you know, because property wasn't maybe quite as much as
much of a premium as it is today in terms
of cost. Because this certainly is a weird flex you know,
I mean you gotta have resources, you gotta own property,
and you gotta have enough money to throw away on
a relatively useless building. Maybe not useless, and it has
(07:46):
its own uses, and perhaps it could be designed to
obstruct the view or to take away from, you know,
the prominence of another building on the block. But they
can't also just be constructed. It's almost like cutting your
nose off despite your face, where it's like you're dumping
all this money just into feeding a feud. One hundred percent.
That's the That's the thing. This genre we can call
(08:08):
it of architecture is not built to make poetry tangible.
It's not built necessarily as some great, you know, veneration
of a loved one. It's it's built to like do
very petty things like block someone's view and and frustrate
the neighbors. It shows what, you know, what it is,
(08:31):
spite architecture, spite buildings. They're the first next door energy
really and uh yeah, and the motivations vary. But what
we wanted to do today and perhaps the first of
a recurring series, is to talk about some examples, because
(08:52):
you might be surprised. Few ridiculous historians they date back.
People have been petty for a while. Maybe we start
with the Trevy Fountain. What do you think? Sure, the
Trevy Fountain was built in the seventeen hundreds and arguably
(09:14):
is an iconic structure in realm, is one of Rome's
most iconic attractions. It was erected on the site of
it was we know, the Romans were really good at
like building aqueducts and like moving water around and kind
of created the first systems of plumbing for for you know,
for all intents and purposes. And so this was actually
built at the site of an important water source in
(09:37):
ancient Rome. And it's made of the same material as
the Roman Coliseum, which is called travertine stone. And the
Trevy Fountain really is, you know, a modern marvel, you know,
because of the way that it is able to using
gravity alone, funnel water into into a really cool, you know,
water feature that's also functional. Yeah, And if you look
(10:01):
at this now, what you'll see is the Greek god
of the sea, Oceanus. Cool name, not too common in
kids today, but Oceanus is surrounded by the mur folk,
by mr people and looking upon you know, in a
very stately manner of Oceanus is looking upon gallons of
(10:21):
flowing water. But if you look very closely, you'll see
something called the Ace of Cups. And if you are
familiar with fountains and sculpture, then you might say, huh,
this one doesn't really fit. This feels like an afterthought.
Almost The thing is the Ace of Cups, and the
(10:45):
Trevy fountain is not there to be part of the picture.
It's not there to be part of the tableau. People
believe that it was put there in the service of pettiness.
There's there's no water flowing. It kind of gets in
the way. You can't really, I don't know see it,
(11:06):
And I guess we should point out to know that
the Ace of Cups is the street name. The public
gave it that name. All this thing does, if you
look at it from the right angle, all the Ace
of Cups does is block the view of the fountain.
And that's where we find a spiteful story. Yeah, it's funny.
(11:28):
I'm trying to get a good image of it. Let's see.
The Ace of Cups, by the way, is a Tarot
card that revolves all around love. You know, whether it's
inverted or upside down or whatever it might be. So Okay,
the ace of Cups, I guess, is is it this
rock feature at the base kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(11:49):
So it's basically okay, oh let me see, Oh here
you go. No, no, no no, yeah, okay, so it's no,
there's a natural kind of rock feature where the stone
is less, you know, hewn, it's just a little more
like rough rock faces. And then you have this thing
that looks kind of like a vase, right like like
(12:10):
sort of like something that you might a planter of
some kind, but it doesn't have any plants in it,
and it's carved into the stone, sitting on the ridge
of you know, the kind of ledge surrounding the structure
and sort of globe like with some sort of filigreed
little details on it. And then it kind of comes
up to a point. But you're right, it is just
(12:30):
big enough that from a distance it could obstruct your
view of the most important aspects of the fountain itself.
And it's actually what would be considered a travertine vase,
and it was specifically tied to blocking a view from
a nearby salon, you know, or a barber shop. Right,
(12:52):
we're getting to it. Yeah, So back in the seventeen hundreds,
there's this Italian guy. He's an architect. His name is
Nikola Salvi, and he wins a contest sponsored by the
pope at the time, the pope was Clement the twelfth,
and in seventeen thirty two Nicolas starts working on this sculpture,
(13:16):
this installation. It takes a long time. It's not going
to the fountain is not going to be done until
thirty years later, in seventeen sixty two. Yeah, so for
three decades, we want to see both sides here. For
three decades, all of the people living in the neighborhood
are living with construction. And if you like our pal
(13:41):
superproducer Max Williams, have ever had to go about your
daily business amid construction, You know, it can wreak havoc
on your nerves. You know, traffic is worse. There's an
eternal clang clang, You got construction crews yelling and wolf whistling.
There was one guy who was perticularly annoyed about this.
(14:03):
We've got a good quote about the legend the legendary
barber here. Yeah, and the barber was essentially becoming a
nuisance for the project. And he was, you know, this
is a huge undertaking that was gonna take a long time.
There's gonna be some construction, and this barber didn't like
the fact that there was this loud, noisy hubbub going
(14:24):
on outside of his shop. Of course, you know, Salvey's
the architects. He can't. He designed the thing, but he
can't necessarily, you know, speed up the process. Right, There's
only so much you can do, especially when you're working
with like hand tools and stuff like that. But the
barber just wouldn't back down. So Salve decided rather than
(14:46):
maybe hear the barber out, or placate him in some way,
or do what they do with movie shoots where they
pay off people a little bit that are inconvenience by
the shooting, which of course wouldn't last thirty years. But instead, no,
he decided not to take the high your own, but
instead to take the road of revenge most sweet or foul,
(15:06):
whichever just decides you're on, I guess. So he decided
to add in this little feature, which is it really
is kind of an example of spite of cutting off
your nose aspite your face, because it doesn't fit in
with the aesthetic of the thing at all. Like we've
already said, it's odd, and it kind of is distracting,
but it's also not so distracting that it that it
(15:28):
causes any kind of real issue with enjoying the piece
from other angles, right right, unless you are looking from
the angle of that barber shop. This is a very
big like Urslon, as he said, this is a very
big screw you. You're never gonna be able to see
this from your place since you complain so much. Now,
(15:50):
revenge is a dangerous, dangerous sword, right, It does as
much harm to the person seeking revenge as it does
to the subject of that. And so Nicola Salve doesn't
get to see whether his petty plan works because he
passes away in seventeen fifty one, well before the project
(16:12):
he's completed, eleven years before it's done. And the barbershop,
if you go there now, the barbershop is not around either.
So it was just one guy said, hey, you're ruining
my neighborhood with this construction, and this other guy saying, hey,
you're being such a problem. I wish you the worst
(16:32):
view in town. Indeed, and you know it still could
be worse. I mean, they live in Rome, which is
a beautiful, beautiful place. So the views are pretty good
no matter which way you look. But there you go.
That's a pretty simple piece of spite architecture, right, just
a little feature, not even a whole building. Like what
if you built a spite fountain that took thirty years,
(16:54):
that would be wild and incredibly really a real commitment
to the bid. So now we're going to talk about
another piece of architecture that's not a fountain or a vaz,
but a wall known as the Jealous Wall. And we
talked about the ace of cups representing love, and this
(17:15):
is about love as well jealousy. It's a very interesting
facet of love, isn't it. Yeah, the Jealous Wall definitely
sounds like a Depeche Mode song Depeche Listen, You're welcome
us Depeche by Guys Depeche. Yeah, this thing is what's
called a folly. It's a neo Gothic folly. And remember
(17:35):
from our episode on architectural follies and garden Hermit's back
in the day. Yeah, this is you know, big put
putt energy here. It was built in Ireland at an
abbey in Mullenger, County, Westmeath by a guy named Robert Rockfort,
also in the seventeen hundreds. In about seventeen sixty, just
(17:57):
a year before the Trevy fo this completed. And the
whole reason he built this wall was because he was
mad at his brother George. And his brother George built
a house or an estate you could really call it
called Tettenham Park House, and it looked better than Robert's house,
(18:19):
Belvedere House, and he was very, very envious technically of
his brother. Robert thought that his wife, lady named Mary Molesworth,
was having an affair with another one of the Rockfort brothers,
and he locked her up in their own home for
(18:40):
thirty years. It's just it's just weird, you know. So Okay,
the Jealous wall doesn't look good either. It doesn't look
like the Trevy Fountain. It's like it's built to look
like a ruin. Yeah. It's in Belvidere House in Ireland's
county West Smith and it's essentially just yeah, like you said,
I mean, it's a very unpleasant, unadorned, kind of raggedy wall,
(19:06):
like something that was left over from a demolition, you know.
And essentially it was kind of that, right, like what
was the construction like it doesn't look super creative. It
looks like it's built to appear older than it is,
and its purpose is entirely to block his brother's view
of the Belvedor House. This is a story of three brothers. Really,
(19:29):
brotherly feuds are always very interesting because it seems like
they go hard and long. Yeah, so these folks are
you could call them semi aristocratic, you know, their upper
middle class for their time in the seventeen thirties. Robert
Rockford wants to marry this artistic eng Stuard from Dublin.
(19:53):
I think calling her youngsters unfair. She is only sixteen
years old at the time. She's the Mary Molesworth we
mentioned earlier, and Molesworth initially wasn't super vibing with Robert,
but they eventually decided to begin a relationship. They settled down.
They had four children, but Robert couldn't Robert got what
(20:17):
he wished for monkey pass style, and he had some regrets.
He was always traveling because first he had political duties
and secondly he didn't really like his family. So his
young wife would go visit her brother in law Arthur,
to get away from taking care of the kids. Arthur
(20:37):
was the couple's nearest neighbor, and Robert started getting sour
on the marriage, and one day comes up to Mary
and says, you're sleeping with my brother Arthur. And Arthur said, dude, no,
I'm not sleeping with my sister in law. But then
Mary said, yeah, you know what, Rob, I am, and
(21:01):
we should get divorced and a counselor unclear whether this
actually happened or whether just at the time she thought
this would be the easiest way out of the marriage.
The heat's going at Arthur, he flees the country, and
Irish divorce law is pretty strict, so the couple can't
break up. They have to be in that situation, unfortunately
(21:24):
has happened to some other people where you're no longer
in a romantic relationship and now your roommates. Yeah. I mean,
because you have to get the blessing literally of the
church to have a divorce. It has to be you know,
it has to adhere to some pretty strict guidelines, you know,
for them to give that approval. Right, Yeah, one hundred percent.
(21:47):
I think you could get something annulled, but that would
be the version of like expagation of a legal record. Well,
hell Man We even have cases where it was hard
for kings to get divorced, right, yes, you know, or
they had to change the laws or you know, like
you know, kind of finagle some special favors from the
clergy right and sort of flex their kingly privilege. But
(22:11):
for regular folks it was super super difficult, Yes, super
duper difficult. So Robert is now an MP. He's an earl.
The British rulers in Dublin like him. He's untouchable, he's
beyond the law because he's buddied up with the people
who makes the laws. He helps decide what's legal. And
(22:34):
he gets mad that basically his ex wife, for all
intents and purposes, is in his home. So he builds
another house on his land. He says, I'm gonna live
here by myself at Belvidere House. Belvidere is really nice
at the time. It's palatial, it's mansion. But his brother
George builds an even better one on the same grounds.
(22:59):
And when Robert sees this, he entirely cuts his brother
out of his life. And he's starting to put the
pieces together. He's a bit conspiratorial. He says, you know,
my brother George had been really close to me, but
maybe he kind of turned me against my wife in
the first place. And at this point it's just worth
(23:20):
saying for those of us playing along at home, Robert
sounds like he's kind of a jerk, no, no question
about it. At the very least, he was a tricky
person to deal with the very strong personality. There are
other parts of his story that have some really sketchy
details associated with them, like suspicious deaths and all of that,
(23:42):
And a lot of these folks were members of his
own family. These were, you know, deaths that maybe would
have benefited from him, right, including his mother and father,
both of whom passed away at times that financially lined
up with Robert's interests. Let's just say yeah again, the
(24:05):
guy who was above the law was never convicted nor
implicated in these things. But it makes you think, so okay,
George's house, like we said, Tuttenham, is the reason for
this jealous wall, which is a nice, opulent folly ruin
and spilled to look like a ruin the same way
(24:27):
you know, put put architecture is meant to look fake.
Robert could not stand to look at his brother's new house,
which was nicer, so he built the Jealous Wall to
obstruct the direct line of sight between their homes. Mary,
who was basically imprisoned, lived with Robert until he died
(24:49):
in the seventeen seventies, and the whole time after they
had separated, the whole time she was like, look, I
never actually had an affair. I'm just trying to not
live with this crazy, crazy dude. And the laws are strange.
And Robert would go around to everybody in town and say, oh,
(25:10):
that Mary lady, she's crazy, right, It's it's tough and uh.
And also, I guess we should note that for the record,
pretty sure Robert never called it the jealous Wall. Pretty
sure other people were like, Wow, Robert's being a real
bagup poop right now. Yeah, backup, owners, Um, you know
(25:34):
it's true. I mean it's the same thing. You know,
things like this, often you don't really coin the name yourself.
Usually even like the name of a manner that sometimes
will be coined by the folks that live there. But
you know, it's like here in Atlanta, we've got the
murder Kroger that folks are desperately involved with the actual
business of Kroger desperately trying to rebrand out of that,
but it just sticks. You know. They can rebuild it
(25:55):
and fancy it up as much as they if they want,
but people will always remember it as the Kroger. This actually,
this attitude between brothers or like close friends really reminds
me a lot of a really incredible film that I
think you've seen as well, been The Banshees of Innish
Hearing m starring uh, what's his name, Brendan Gleeson and oh,
(26:17):
who's that lot? Right? He's awesome, He's phenomenal. That just
so you get a watch deleted scene from Batman with him.
Is the Joker? Yeah, he's he's a joker with like
a real acid burned face. But in the benches finish
here and he's sort of like this young, kind of
drunk kid who's very, very sad. But the story revolves
(26:39):
around a pair who were formerly best friends and then
one day one of them decides he doesn't want to
be friends anymore, and it's it's just about this this
kind of stubbornness, weaponized stubbornness, you know, that just taken
to the nth degree, and this kind of feud here
in the story about the Jealous Wall really reminds me
of the attitude I just want or if there's a
(27:01):
historical precedent in Irish culture of that level of stubbornness,
you know. And it's Colin Farrell, right, is the other
that's why? Who was also in The Batman? Yes, I
recognizable as the penguin now that's acting. Uh, it's funny,
we're I was hanging out and talking to one of
my friends about different people we met in Austin and
(27:23):
one of them said, well, any of those people could
have been Tilda Swinton. You would never know. So yeah,
Colin Farrell got to Swinton level stuff with that. So
if you go there now, you'll see Tuttenham House, the
fancy new one in this story has fallen into disrepair
(27:45):
and it's kind of a ruin. But you can still
get a tour of the Belvedere House and they'll tell
you the story of the Jealous Wall. You know what,
Let's let's stay with houses. Let's do two more houses.
There's one guy named John Tyler who built something called
(28:09):
the Tyler Spite House in eighteen fourteen, and he built
an entire mansion just to stop the local town from
building a road. Yeah, that's the whole thing, right, that's
another flavor of these kinds of spike houses or spite buildings,
(28:30):
is trying to interfere with progress, you know. Yeah, and
it was going through his land, to be fair, but
he knew there was a local law that set authorities
can't build a road if a building's being constructed in
the way of that road. So this guy is pretty
(28:52):
great at his job. He's got his own foot he's
got his own historical footnotes. John Tyler's the first optimologist
in America or in the US to perform a cataract operation.
And they're in Frederick, Maryland. He is a big wheel.
He owns a lot of nice parcels of land that
he gets a public auctions. One of those parcels, on
(29:14):
the Courthouse Square is directly in the way of the
city's plans to extend Record Street south to meet a
place called Westpatrick Street. And this guy, I don't know
how you feel you all feel about this, but this
guy said, I don't want the road cutting across my land.
(29:34):
I don't like roads being next to my house, which
I don't know. It feels like that's a kind of
a rich person problem. Yeah, it's that nimby thing. Yeah,
in my backyard. It's the thing we see all the
time where it's like people want improvement, they want you know,
(29:55):
they want innovation or whatever, or maybe they don't, but
they don't want it to inconvenience that anyway, like the
construction of it. But you know, this also is sort
of an old school attitude about just no, things must
stay the same forever. You know, this is my world
and y'all just live in it, and you you know,
get out of my yard and all of that stuff.
So he found a building contractor that was ready to go,
(30:18):
like ready to start, you know, work immediately. And again
that probably required a little greasing of the wheels monetarily
because once again this is a bit of a luxury
of the wealthy, the spiked architecture flex. Right. So when
the road cruise arrived in the morning, they came upon
something alarming. They came upon a giant hole in the
(30:40):
ground where the road was meant to go. So, yeah,
and in that giant hole there were workmen at work
like they do, building a foundation, a foundation for what.
All the while our buddy John, doctor John, not that
doctor Jib was looking by, you know, sitting in a
(31:03):
chair just like I picture, like you described, just hands,
fingers steepled and just cackling. If not externally, certainly internally. Yeah,
it's nuts. And honestly, kudos to him for actually building
the house and following through, because he could have just
dug a hole and then said we're going to make
(31:24):
a house at some point, but he did build the house.
The house is around now. The most recent owners were
a family that's now based in the Philippines, the descendants
of World War Two naval hero Charles Parsons, Chick to
his friends. And when the Parsons were going to sell
the house, Myers family, who lived next door took an interest.
(31:49):
They had been super involved with historic properties and preservation
for several years. They restored their own house and then
they also run a be a little bed and breakfast
in so that one that one, I think is not
as dirty as the jealous wall right, because that guy
(32:09):
may have killed some people, right, No, No, that guy was.
That guy was trash. The jealous wall fellow maybe even
killed his own parents or have them killed. I think
the statute of limitations on slander has passed a long sense,
but still right, Like, I mean, this guy is essentially
building a house in the middle of what would be
a road. What were they using ben that allowed them
(32:31):
to encroach upon his property in the first place. Is
it sort of like that imminent domain thing that we know?
This is a little more modern, where like the government
can take part of private land for infrastructure improvement as
long as they pay fair market value or something along
those lines. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's like imminent domain. And
(32:51):
that's where you can see it all the time, especially
if you're in a growing city or a growing part
of town where a road gets widened and someone's front
yard as a result, goes back right five ten feet whatever.
And imminent domain can be pretty controversial to some people,
But it's, like you said, it's like a nimbi thing.
(33:14):
Most people like the idea of imminent domain so long
as it is not affecting them, right, Just like just
like what is it Cape Cod? Is it it's somewhere
in the northeast, in the nice area of the Northeast
where people generally love wind turbans or wind power, so
(33:35):
long as it's not blocking their view of the ocean.
That they paid millions of dollars for I don't know,
I mean spite. It's crazy. Maybe we do one more example,
what do we know about the Hollandsbury spite House. Yeah,
I'm sure they coined it as that right when the
moment they built there. This house has founded on spite,
yes exactly, that's its own kind of foundation. It's a
(33:56):
shaky foundation, I would argue, I don't think it's smart
to build or do anything based around spite. You know,
I'm a firm believer in good vibes. Start with positivity,
Start with positivity and and then you know, good things
will typically follow um when you start from spite, you know,
who knows what could happen. So yeah, most folks are
usually content with building a privacy fence around there how
(34:19):
their homes, you know, to keep prying eyes away, or
to kind of show where their property lines are, you know,
through just like a simple a simple fence, a privacy
fence or whatever. But John Hollinsbury, who was himself, yeah,
he was himself a brickmaker. He built a seven foot
(34:40):
wide house in eighteen thirty to prevent folks from using
his alley, using the alley next to his home. Because
he people kept using it as like a short cut,
like a cut through in their wagons, you know. Wagon
traffic kept popping through there, and um, I can see
that being irritating, you know, but it's also like it's
(35:04):
an odd solution to what seems like a simpler problem.
It's a bit extra, it's it's a bit extra. I'm
just gonna share some pictures here in our chat so
we can all see this. But it is a tiny
house if you see, Yeah, it's uh. There are two
windows and one door on the outside, and it, um,
(35:27):
it looks like something you would see in the canals
of Amsterdam, but this is in Alexandria, Virginia. It is
about seven feet wide, as you said, it's twenty five
feet deep. It is two stories. It's only three hundred
and twenty five square feet, and it's it's an alley.
He enclosed the alley and made the outside of it
(35:48):
look like a house because he was so mad about
not just horse drawn wagons, but people hanging out and
maybe doing some alley stuff in his alley. Nobody wants that.
You hate. You hate to see it, you know. It
really reminds me too, Ben of investigations that we've done
in the past for stuff they don't want you to
(36:08):
know about fake buildings, where you can create what appears
to be a building or a storefront or like the
facade of a building in order to cover up things
like electrical conduit, you know, an infrastructure, or like vents
or whatever from subways. And that is what I would
also typically associate with eminent domain, where if they there
(36:29):
was an episode of King of the Hill, I think,
where like the government used eminent domain to like put
a bunch of electrical stuff in a lot near Hank's house,
you know where they hang out in the alley, and
then in the end they were able to convince them
to build a fake house around it. Interesting, Okay, so
that makes it. Yeah, yeah, that's the usual compromise for
(36:52):
nimby stuff. But there is an entire quote unquote apartment
block in New York City that is just a con
ed power station and they will politely ask you to
stop walking around it because we've been there. But yeah,
they were polite, so this okay. So I'm torn about
this one because it sounds like the wagons were going
(37:17):
through so frequently that they were scarring the walls along
the alley and you can see the gouges left by
the wagon wheels in the living room today. So I
feel like, if he has the money and he does it,
and he owns the alley, then it's really an investment, right,
He can a creative solution honestly, for what I would
(37:38):
argue would be considered a menace. So I actually think
this guy wins in terms of like the least spiteful
spite house. You know, sure he's depriving people of their
cut through, but honestly, it's kind of rude to cut
through somebody's yard anyway, and I think kind of illegal, right,
It depends if you hop a fence and cut through
(37:59):
somebody's yard to get through, that's not okay, that's trespassing.
I mean, I'm sure he probably posted some version of
a no trespassing sign first and people just didn't care.
But there was a guy who bought this in nineteen
ninety for only one hundred and thirty five thousand dollars.
It's got a great location, but again it's really small.
(38:21):
It's just across the Potomac, and this guy says it
feels like it's a sailboat cabin. He says, you know,
I've rented it out for a while to people in
the past, and if you walk in now, you'll see
the front door open straight into the living room. There's
(38:42):
a regular, you know, like grown up size sofa, and
then there's just past that a really narrow, steep stairway
to the second floor. And under the stairs is the cupboard.
There's a little microwave oven. On the other wall. You
got the kitchen counter, you get a small sink, you
got under the counter, refrigerator, freezer, also small. There's a
(39:05):
table pushed against the wall. It's a micro house basically,
But you know, this reminds me of some of the
houses I've seen in Philadelphia that are also really small
and constructed just to sort of maximize the use of space.
I've always low key wanted to try living in one
(39:30):
of these places, but the problem is you'd want to
live by yourself. I feel like it's not enough for
two people. As a matter of fact, the guy who
owned it in the nineties one time you rented it
to a couple who wanted to live there and kind
of like a biosphere experiment and want to see if
they could survive living together that closely on around the
(39:51):
World Cruise. I love it. I mean, is this something
that's like, can you airbnb this place? It seems like
the kind of oddity attraction that would you know, encourage
that sort of thing. That's a great question. That's a
great question. It is America's skinniest home. I do not
know if it is up for rent now. There are
pictures on the Internet of folks like going through it,
(40:15):
so I don't know if they're, you know, renting it
or what. But I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised.
There certainly are oddities like that that you can you know,
like the Twilight House, you know, like wherever that is
an upstate New York or No. I think that's actually
an Oregon. Also, I think the Dungeon Family House here
in Atlanta, where like Outcasts and Goody Mob and all
(40:36):
those folks came up and making records in that literal
basement and they called the Dungeon Family. I think you
can still airbnb that place here in Atlanta. I believe
you're correct. You can. Also, if you want to rent
the Hollinsbury Spite House, the skinniest house in the United States,
then you're gonna want to contact Jack Sammy's say, m M.
(41:00):
They live there occasionally. I guess they stop by when
they're in town, but generally speaking, it is a private
residence and you definitely can't just walk through it, which
means our old pal John Hollinsbury was successful, and I
(41:21):
agree with you that means we officially a ridiculous historian
appoint him the winner of this spiked architecture episode. But
just this episode, because again, like I said in the beginning,
I feel like we're going to find multiple examples of
this maybe in future episodes. What do you think, Oh
for sure? I mean it's not that Again, it wasn't
(41:43):
something that I wasn't really aware of until Jeff turned
us on to it. Obviously something a phenomenon that he
has been fascinated with for a long time. And now
I think it's something that I'll keep an eye out
for it just even in like my you know, travels
and day to day and with that, we'd love to
hear your examples of spite architecture in your own neck
of the Global Woods. Now we will go toward I
(42:07):
think at some point we'll have to mention the more
hostile architecture like the patios and the benches studded with
things to prevent people from loitering or laying down, you
know what I mean? Like you see that everywhere. For now,
we love to hear more of the historical fun ones.
You can find us on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
(42:30):
We'll get social media going at some point for the show,
but for now you can also find us as individuals.
That's right. You can find me on Instagram exclusively where
I am at how now, Noel Brown Ben I believe
there are two spots on the seas of social meds
that people can can find you. Ah. Yes, if you
sail the high seas of the Internet, whether Ectocooler or ocean,
(42:53):
you can. You can find me most easily on a
couple places. I'll be on Instagram and a burst of
creativity calling my self app in Bulling Bowl I n
you can find me on Twitter where I'm app in
bulling HSW. Go to both of those places, sneak through
the Instagram stories, slide into the dms. You know what's
on your mind. You got some secret projects on the way.
As always, if you are on Twitter, you're gonna want
(43:16):
to get thee to a particular Twitter handle that of
our own mister Max Williams. Indeed, yes, you can find
me at atl Underscore Max Williams, which is where my
Twitter pages, Twitter pag to just thinking about there it is.
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from
(43:43):
My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. We're here. We're live and direct, in
full effect with some architecture for you. And first off,
let's shout out the architect of our podcasts are what
an only superproducer, mister Max Williams. Woo. I liked you.
(00:50):
I liked your kind of classic radio dj en show.
They're live and in full effect with the architects than
our podcast set. Yeah, there we go. Let's keep it going.
Um yeah, yeah, So I'm Ben your Noel and Noel,
You and I might be I don't want to speak
for you, my friend, but we might be a little
punchy coming in today. What do you think. Yeah, it's
(01:11):
from all those children I was punching on the plane.
We wouldn't let it go. We were we were like
eternally because we hang out a lot, and we were
we were eternally in these social situations where if we're
not sitting right next to each other. Uh, Noel, you
and I are texting like kids passing notes in class. Yeah,
(01:32):
that's what texting is really, you know, the end of
the day. It's it's a modernized note passing. It was
funny too. We had a fla out from Austin. We
had a lovely time at south By Southwest meeting people,
doing panels, all that kind of stuff. And on the
plane back we had a genuine Marvel superhero on our flight. Yes, sir, yeah,
(01:55):
I think you were sitting somewhere different in the terminal
and I U I texted you because we were on
the same flight with two world famous celebrities, well one
very world famous celebrity, Anthony Mackie, who plays First Falcon
and now the new Captain America at Marvel Films. I
(02:16):
didn't know that he was the new Captain America. By
the way, that was a giant spoiler for the MCU
ben My bad, because I know you care so much,
but I don't care. I care enough to be part
of the conversation. Who was the second more important celebrity,
if I might ask, it was none other than if
we could get a drum roll Max or not a
(02:37):
drum roll A sinister. Yeah, there it is Jonathan Strickland,
aka the Quister, who really wanted us to know he
sat He was sitting in first class it was like
really insisted upon himself. Yeah, no, for sure, and I'm
(02:58):
just glad the plane made it. You know, the nefarious
plans didn't didn't cause some sort of in air catastrophe. Um,
but no, to be to be true, to be real,
let's let's do that for a second. Yeah, we were
actually we're actually really friends with Jonathan's strictly. We played
mini golf together. This wonderful like I think it had
been around since the forties or something that was called
(03:19):
like Peter Pan Mini Golf in Austin, and it's this
the kind of thing you think of. I think a
lot of our hometowns probably have places like this. For me,
it was called putt put golf and games where you
have these like waterfalls and you know, like giant elephant
sculptures and things made a concrete or some other you
know material. This place was all like down the rabbit
Hole kind of Alice in Wonderland, psychedelic rabbits and literally
(03:42):
rabbit holing vibes, creepy clowns. We did some cool social
shoots for stuff they don't want you to know, so
be on the lookout for those if those things exist. Yeah,
I think they're gonna work out. I felt pretty good
about them, you know, I felt like we I feel
like we were having fun. And fun is contagious, right,
hopefully still more contagious than COVID. We Uh, this is
(04:04):
what I was thinking. I'm really glad you brought this up, Noll,
because put Putt is purposely spiteful architecture, and our pal
research associate Jeff Bartlett has been obsessed with spiteful architecture
for a while. But what do we mean when we
(04:24):
talk about spite architecture? Is it what it sounds like?
I guess so. I mean, you know, well, in the
context of Putt PUTT, it's literally things obstructing your success,
you know, barriers to you thinking that that cute, little
multicolored ball into that hole. I think we all actually
did pretty well. But spite buildings are specifically pieces of
(04:47):
construction intended to irritate and in an act of protest.
So you know, I think we all hear love curb
your enthusiasm. There's a string of episodes in one of
the more recent seasons about us opening a spite or
because Larry has a beef with Mocha Joe for whatever reason,
I can't quite remember what. It doesn't matter because it's petty.
It's all about human pettiness that show. So he starts
(05:09):
another store next to him, another coffee shop. Thank it's
just called Larry's something maybe see like Larry's Mocha Joe.
I don't remember. It was something along those lines. And
he has like an absurd toilet or something in them.
But anyway, it's that's so, that's a spike. This architecture
is irrelevant there. It's more about the business itself. Here
we're talking about making human pettiness and all of that
(05:33):
stuff literally manifest through buildings. Yeah, the idea is that
you are going to you're going to get back at
someone in a lasting way. And we see spike architecture
around the world. It's one of those things where once
you recognize what it is, you will have an embarrassment
(05:55):
of riches when it comes to finding examples. A lot
of the origin stories of these edifices, these structures, these statues,
these buildings, a lot of them are you know, kind
of embellished. They become a selling point, especially if the
thing is a little older. But we're going to encounter
(06:15):
some amazing, ridiculous history here, we're talking spurned lovers, we're
talking feuds between siblings, and of course we're talking everybody's
favorite vengeance. Avengers are the architects of spite buildings sometimes
And there's something really interesting here from a great mental
(06:38):
philoss article called Houses Built out of Spite by Virginia
Claire McGuire, where the author notes, most towns haven't oddity
or two an architectural oddity, and it's the building locals
love to point out to visitors. This happens pretty often
in the United States, but it's everywhere in Europe, you
(07:02):
know what I mean. Like you you might drop by
for a pint or you're getting you know, you're getting
a snack, and then someone says, oh, this building was
built in you know, the thirteen hundreds, and it was
built because so and so was considered to be a
witch like you never know, well, I mean, you know,
certainly in the earlier days that you're talking about there,
(07:24):
it might have been easier to do one of these things,
you know, because property wasn't maybe quite as much as
much of a premium as it is today in terms
of cost. Because this certainly is a weird flex you know,
I mean you gotta have resources, you gotta own property,
and you gotta have enough money to throw away on
a relatively useless building. Maybe not useless, and it has
(07:46):
its own uses, and perhaps it could be designed to
obstruct the view or to take away from, you know,
the prominence of another building on the block. But they
can't also just be constructed. It's almost like cutting your
nose off despite your face, where it's like you're dumping
all this money just into feeding a feud. One hundred percent.
That's the That's the thing. This genre we can call
(08:08):
it of architecture is not built to make poetry tangible.
It's not built necessarily as some great, you know, veneration
of a loved one. It's it's built to like do
very petty things like block someone's view and and frustrate
the neighbors. It shows what, you know, what it is,
(08:31):
spite architecture, spite buildings. They're the first next door energy
really and uh yeah, and the motivations vary. But what
we wanted to do today and perhaps the first of
a recurring series, is to talk about some examples, because
(08:52):
you might be surprised. Few ridiculous historians they date back.
People have been petty for a while. Maybe we start
with the Trevy Fountain. What do you think? Sure, the
Trevy Fountain was built in the seventeen hundreds and arguably
(09:14):
is an iconic structure in realm, is one of Rome's
most iconic attractions. It was erected on the site of
it was we know, the Romans were really good at
like building aqueducts and like moving water around and kind
of created the first systems of plumbing for for you know,
for all intents and purposes. And so this was actually
built at the site of an important water source in
(09:37):
ancient Rome. And it's made of the same material as
the Roman Coliseum, which is called travertine stone. And the
Trevy Fountain really is, you know, a modern marvel, you know,
because of the way that it is able to using
gravity alone, funnel water into into a really cool, you know,
water feature that's also functional. Yeah, And if you look
(10:01):
at this now, what you'll see is the Greek god
of the sea, Oceanus. Cool name, not too common in
kids today, but Oceanus is surrounded by the mur folk,
by mr people and looking upon you know, in a
very stately manner of Oceanus is looking upon gallons of
(10:21):
flowing water. But if you look very closely, you'll see
something called the Ace of Cups. And if you are
familiar with fountains and sculpture, then you might say, huh,
this one doesn't really fit. This feels like an afterthought.
Almost The thing is the Ace of Cups, and the
(10:45):
Trevy fountain is not there to be part of the picture.
It's not there to be part of the tableau. People
believe that it was put there in the service of pettiness.
There's there's no water flowing. It kind of gets in
the way. You can't really, I don't know see it,
(11:06):
And I guess we should point out to know that
the Ace of Cups is the street name. The public
gave it that name. All this thing does, if you
look at it from the right angle, all the Ace
of Cups does is block the view of the fountain.
And that's where we find a spiteful story. Yeah, it's funny.
(11:28):
I'm trying to get a good image of it. Let's see.
The Ace of Cups, by the way, is a Tarot
card that revolves all around love. You know, whether it's
inverted or upside down or whatever it might be. So Okay,
the ace of Cups, I guess, is is it this
rock feature at the base kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(11:49):
So it's basically okay, oh let me see, Oh here
you go. No, no, no no, yeah, okay, so it's no,
there's a natural kind of rock feature where the stone
is less, you know, hewn, it's just a little more
like rough rock faces. And then you have this thing
that looks kind of like a vase, right like like
(12:10):
sort of like something that you might a planter of
some kind, but it doesn't have any plants in it,
and it's carved into the stone, sitting on the ridge
of you know, the kind of ledge surrounding the structure
and sort of globe like with some sort of filigreed
little details on it. And then it kind of comes
up to a point. But you're right, it is just
(12:30):
big enough that from a distance it could obstruct your
view of the most important aspects of the fountain itself.
And it's actually what would be considered a travertine vase,
and it was specifically tied to blocking a view from
a nearby salon, you know, or a barber shop. Right,
(12:52):
we're getting to it. Yeah, So back in the seventeen hundreds,
there's this Italian guy. He's an architect. His name is
Nikola Salvi, and he wins a contest sponsored by the
pope at the time, the pope was Clement the twelfth,
and in seventeen thirty two Nicolas starts working on this sculpture,
(13:16):
this installation. It takes a long time. It's not going
to the fountain is not going to be done until
thirty years later, in seventeen sixty two. Yeah, so for
three decades, we want to see both sides here. For
three decades, all of the people living in the neighborhood
are living with construction. And if you like our pal
(13:41):
superproducer Max Williams, have ever had to go about your
daily business amid construction, You know, it can wreak havoc
on your nerves. You know, traffic is worse. There's an
eternal clang clang, You got construction crews yelling and wolf whistling.
There was one guy who was perticularly annoyed about this.
(14:03):
We've got a good quote about the legend the legendary
barber here. Yeah, and the barber was essentially becoming a
nuisance for the project. And he was, you know, this
is a huge undertaking that was gonna take a long time.
There's gonna be some construction, and this barber didn't like
the fact that there was this loud, noisy hubbub going
(14:24):
on outside of his shop. Of course, you know, Salvey's
the architects. He can't. He designed the thing, but he
can't necessarily, you know, speed up the process. Right, There's
only so much you can do, especially when you're working
with like hand tools and stuff like that. But the
barber just wouldn't back down. So Salve decided rather than
(14:46):
maybe hear the barber out, or placate him in some way,
or do what they do with movie shoots where they
pay off people a little bit that are inconvenience by
the shooting, which of course wouldn't last thirty years. But instead, no,
he decided not to take the high your own, but
instead to take the road of revenge most sweet or foul,
(15:06):
whichever just decides you're on, I guess. So he decided
to add in this little feature, which is it really
is kind of an example of spite of cutting off
your nose aspite your face, because it doesn't fit in
with the aesthetic of the thing at all. Like we've
already said, it's odd, and it kind of is distracting,
but it's also not so distracting that it that it
(15:28):
causes any kind of real issue with enjoying the piece
from other angles, right right, unless you are looking from
the angle of that barber shop. This is a very
big like Urslon, as he said, this is a very
big screw you. You're never gonna be able to see
this from your place since you complain so much. Now,
(15:50):
revenge is a dangerous, dangerous sword, right, It does as
much harm to the person seeking revenge as it does
to the subject of that. And so Nicola Salve doesn't
get to see whether his petty plan works because he
passes away in seventeen fifty one, well before the project
(16:12):
he's completed, eleven years before it's done. And the barbershop,
if you go there now, the barbershop is not around either.
So it was just one guy said, hey, you're ruining
my neighborhood with this construction, and this other guy saying, hey,
you're being such a problem. I wish you the worst
(16:32):
view in town. Indeed, and you know it still could
be worse. I mean, they live in Rome, which is
a beautiful, beautiful place. So the views are pretty good
no matter which way you look. But there you go.
That's a pretty simple piece of spite architecture, right, just
a little feature, not even a whole building. Like what
if you built a spite fountain that took thirty years,
(16:54):
that would be wild and incredibly really a real commitment
to the bid. So now we're going to talk about
another piece of architecture that's not a fountain or a vaz,
but a wall known as the Jealous Wall. And we
talked about the ace of cups representing love, and this
(17:15):
is about love as well jealousy. It's a very interesting
facet of love, isn't it. Yeah, the Jealous Wall definitely
sounds like a Depeche Mode song Depeche Listen, You're welcome
us Depeche by Guys Depeche. Yeah, this thing is what's
called a folly. It's a neo Gothic folly. And remember
(17:35):
from our episode on architectural follies and garden Hermit's back
in the day. Yeah, this is you know, big put
putt energy here. It was built in Ireland at an
abbey in Mullenger, County, Westmeath by a guy named Robert Rockfort,
also in the seventeen hundreds. In about seventeen sixty, just
(17:57):
a year before the Trevy fo this completed. And the
whole reason he built this wall was because he was
mad at his brother George. And his brother George built
a house or an estate you could really call it
called Tettenham Park House, and it looked better than Robert's house,
(18:19):
Belvedere House, and he was very, very envious technically of
his brother. Robert thought that his wife, lady named Mary Molesworth,
was having an affair with another one of the Rockfort brothers,
and he locked her up in their own home for
(18:40):
thirty years. It's just it's just weird, you know. So Okay,
the Jealous wall doesn't look good either. It doesn't look
like the Trevy Fountain. It's like it's built to look
like a ruin. Yeah. It's in Belvidere House in Ireland's
county West Smith and it's essentially just yeah, like you said,
I mean, it's a very unpleasant, unadorned, kind of raggedy wall,
(19:06):
like something that was left over from a demolition, you know.
And essentially it was kind of that, right, like what
was the construction like it doesn't look super creative. It
looks like it's built to appear older than it is,
and its purpose is entirely to block his brother's view
of the Belvedor House. This is a story of three brothers. Really,
(19:29):
brotherly feuds are always very interesting because it seems like
they go hard and long. Yeah, so these folks are
you could call them semi aristocratic, you know, their upper
middle class for their time in the seventeen thirties. Robert
Rockford wants to marry this artistic eng Stuard from Dublin.
(19:53):
I think calling her youngsters unfair. She is only sixteen
years old at the time. She's the Mary Molesworth we
mentioned earlier, and Molesworth initially wasn't super vibing with Robert,
but they eventually decided to begin a relationship. They settled down.
They had four children, but Robert couldn't Robert got what
(20:17):
he wished for monkey pass style, and he had some regrets.
He was always traveling because first he had political duties
and secondly he didn't really like his family. So his
young wife would go visit her brother in law Arthur,
to get away from taking care of the kids. Arthur
(20:37):
was the couple's nearest neighbor, and Robert started getting sour
on the marriage, and one day comes up to Mary
and says, you're sleeping with my brother Arthur. And Arthur said, dude, no,
I'm not sleeping with my sister in law. But then
Mary said, yeah, you know what, Rob, I am, and
(21:01):
we should get divorced and a counselor unclear whether this
actually happened or whether just at the time she thought
this would be the easiest way out of the marriage.
The heat's going at Arthur, he flees the country, and
Irish divorce law is pretty strict, so the couple can't
break up. They have to be in that situation, unfortunately
(21:24):
has happened to some other people where you're no longer
in a romantic relationship and now your roommates. Yeah. I mean,
because you have to get the blessing literally of the
church to have a divorce. It has to be you know,
it has to adhere to some pretty strict guidelines, you know,
for them to give that approval. Right, Yeah, one hundred percent.
(21:47):
I think you could get something annulled, but that would
be the version of like expagation of a legal record. Well,
hell Man We even have cases where it was hard
for kings to get divorced, right, yes, you know, or
they had to change the laws or you know, like
you know, kind of finagle some special favors from the
clergy right and sort of flex their kingly privilege. But
(22:11):
for regular folks it was super super difficult, Yes, super
duper difficult. So Robert is now an MP. He's an earl.
The British rulers in Dublin like him. He's untouchable, he's
beyond the law because he's buddied up with the people
who makes the laws. He helps decide what's legal. And
(22:34):
he gets mad that basically his ex wife, for all
intents and purposes, is in his home. So he builds
another house on his land. He says, I'm gonna live
here by myself at Belvidere House. Belvidere is really nice
at the time. It's palatial, it's mansion. But his brother
George builds an even better one on the same grounds.
(22:59):
And when Robert sees this, he entirely cuts his brother
out of his life. And he's starting to put the
pieces together. He's a bit conspiratorial. He says, you know,
my brother George had been really close to me, but
maybe he kind of turned me against my wife in
the first place. And at this point it's just worth
(23:20):
saying for those of us playing along at home, Robert
sounds like he's kind of a jerk, no, no question
about it. At the very least, he was a tricky
person to deal with the very strong personality. There are
other parts of his story that have some really sketchy
details associated with them, like suspicious deaths and all of that,
(23:42):
And a lot of these folks were members of his
own family. These were, you know, deaths that maybe would
have benefited from him, right, including his mother and father,
both of whom passed away at times that financially lined
up with Robert's interests. Let's just say yeah again, the
(24:05):
guy who was above the law was never convicted nor
implicated in these things. But it makes you think, so okay,
George's house, like we said, Tuttenham, is the reason for
this jealous wall, which is a nice, opulent folly ruin
and spilled to look like a ruin the same way
(24:27):
you know, put put architecture is meant to look fake.
Robert could not stand to look at his brother's new house,
which was nicer, so he built the Jealous Wall to
obstruct the direct line of sight between their homes. Mary,
who was basically imprisoned, lived with Robert until he died
(24:49):
in the seventeen seventies, and the whole time after they
had separated, the whole time she was like, look, I
never actually had an affair. I'm just trying to not
live with this crazy, crazy dude. And the laws are strange.
And Robert would go around to everybody in town and say, oh,
(25:10):
that Mary lady, she's crazy, right, It's it's tough and uh.
And also, I guess we should note that for the record,
pretty sure Robert never called it the jealous Wall. Pretty
sure other people were like, Wow, Robert's being a real
bagup poop right now. Yeah, backup, owners, Um, you know
(25:34):
it's true. I mean it's the same thing. You know,
things like this, often you don't really coin the name yourself.
Usually even like the name of a manner that sometimes
will be coined by the folks that live there. But
you know, it's like here in Atlanta, we've got the
murder Kroger that folks are desperately involved with the actual
business of Kroger desperately trying to rebrand out of that,
but it just sticks. You know. They can rebuild it
(25:55):
and fancy it up as much as they if they want,
but people will always remember it as the Kroger. This actually,
this attitude between brothers or like close friends really reminds
me a lot of a really incredible film that I
think you've seen as well, been The Banshees of Innish
Hearing m starring uh, what's his name, Brendan Gleeson and oh,
(26:17):
who's that lot? Right? He's awesome, He's phenomenal. That just
so you get a watch deleted scene from Batman with him.
Is the Joker? Yeah, he's he's a joker with like
a real acid burned face. But in the benches finish
here and he's sort of like this young, kind of
drunk kid who's very, very sad. But the story revolves
(26:39):
around a pair who were formerly best friends and then
one day one of them decides he doesn't want to
be friends anymore, and it's it's just about this this
kind of stubbornness, weaponized stubbornness, you know, that just taken
to the nth degree, and this kind of feud here
in the story about the Jealous Wall really reminds me
of the attitude I just want or if there's a
(27:01):
historical precedent in Irish culture of that level of stubbornness,
you know. And it's Colin Farrell, right, is the other
that's why? Who was also in The Batman? Yes, I
recognizable as the penguin now that's acting. Uh, it's funny,
we're I was hanging out and talking to one of
my friends about different people we met in Austin and
(27:23):
one of them said, well, any of those people could
have been Tilda Swinton. You would never know. So yeah,
Colin Farrell got to Swinton level stuff with that. So
if you go there now, you'll see Tuttenham House, the
fancy new one in this story has fallen into disrepair
(27:45):
and it's kind of a ruin. But you can still
get a tour of the Belvedere House and they'll tell
you the story of the Jealous Wall. You know what,
Let's let's stay with houses. Let's do two more houses.
There's one guy named John Tyler who built something called
(28:09):
the Tyler Spite House in eighteen fourteen, and he built
an entire mansion just to stop the local town from
building a road. Yeah, that's the whole thing, right, that's
another flavor of these kinds of spike houses or spite buildings,
(28:30):
is trying to interfere with progress, you know. Yeah, and
it was going through his land, to be fair, but
he knew there was a local law that set authorities
can't build a road if a building's being constructed in
the way of that road. So this guy is pretty
(28:52):
great at his job. He's got his own foot he's
got his own historical footnotes. John Tyler's the first optimologist
in America or in the US to perform a cataract operation.
And they're in Frederick, Maryland. He is a big wheel.
He owns a lot of nice parcels of land that
he gets a public auctions. One of those parcels, on
(29:14):
the Courthouse Square is directly in the way of the
city's plans to extend Record Street south to meet a
place called Westpatrick Street. And this guy, I don't know
how you feel you all feel about this, but this
guy said, I don't want the road cutting across my land.
(29:34):
I don't like roads being next to my house, which
I don't know. It feels like that's a kind of
a rich person problem. Yeah, it's that nimby thing. Yeah,
in my backyard. It's the thing we see all the
time where it's like people want improvement, they want you know,
(29:55):
they want innovation or whatever, or maybe they don't, but
they don't want it to inconvenience that anyway, like the
construction of it. But you know, this also is sort
of an old school attitude about just no, things must
stay the same forever. You know, this is my world
and y'all just live in it, and you you know,
get out of my yard and all of that stuff.
So he found a building contractor that was ready to go,
(30:18):
like ready to start, you know, work immediately. And again
that probably required a little greasing of the wheels monetarily
because once again this is a bit of a luxury
of the wealthy, the spiked architecture flex. Right. So when
the road cruise arrived in the morning, they came upon
something alarming. They came upon a giant hole in the
(30:40):
ground where the road was meant to go. So, yeah,
and in that giant hole there were workmen at work
like they do, building a foundation, a foundation for what.
All the while our buddy John, doctor John, not that
doctor Jib was looking by, you know, sitting in a
(31:03):
chair just like I picture, like you described, just hands,
fingers steepled and just cackling. If not externally, certainly internally. Yeah,
it's nuts. And honestly, kudos to him for actually building
the house and following through, because he could have just
dug a hole and then said we're going to make
(31:24):
a house at some point, but he did build the house.
The house is around now. The most recent owners were
a family that's now based in the Philippines, the descendants
of World War Two naval hero Charles Parsons, Chick to
his friends. And when the Parsons were going to sell
the house, Myers family, who lived next door took an interest.
(31:49):
They had been super involved with historic properties and preservation
for several years. They restored their own house and then
they also run a be a little bed and breakfast
in so that one that one, I think is not
as dirty as the jealous wall right, because that guy
(32:09):
may have killed some people, right, No, No, that guy was.
That guy was trash. The jealous wall fellow maybe even
killed his own parents or have them killed. I think
the statute of limitations on slander has passed a long sense,
but still right, Like, I mean, this guy is essentially
building a house in the middle of what would be
a road. What were they using ben that allowed them
(32:31):
to encroach upon his property in the first place. Is
it sort of like that imminent domain thing that we know?
This is a little more modern, where like the government
can take part of private land for infrastructure improvement as
long as they pay fair market value or something along
those lines. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's like imminent domain. And
(32:51):
that's where you can see it all the time, especially
if you're in a growing city or a growing part
of town where a road gets widened and someone's front
yard as a result, goes back right five ten feet whatever.
And imminent domain can be pretty controversial to some people,
But it's, like you said, it's like a nimbi thing.
(33:14):
Most people like the idea of imminent domain so long
as it is not affecting them, right, Just like just
like what is it Cape Cod? Is it it's somewhere
in the northeast, in the nice area of the Northeast
where people generally love wind turbans or wind power, so
(33:35):
long as it's not blocking their view of the ocean.
That they paid millions of dollars for I don't know,
I mean spite. It's crazy. Maybe we do one more example,
what do we know about the Hollandsbury spite House. Yeah,
I'm sure they coined it as that right when the
moment they built there. This house has founded on spite,
yes exactly, that's its own kind of foundation. It's a
(33:56):
shaky foundation, I would argue, I don't think it's smart
to build or do anything based around spite. You know,
I'm a firm believer in good vibes. Start with positivity,
Start with positivity and and then you know, good things
will typically follow um when you start from spite, you know,
who knows what could happen. So yeah, most folks are
usually content with building a privacy fence around there how
(34:19):
their homes, you know, to keep prying eyes away, or
to kind of show where their property lines are, you know,
through just like a simple a simple fence, a privacy
fence or whatever. But John Hollinsbury, who was himself, yeah,
he was himself a brickmaker. He built a seven foot
(34:40):
wide house in eighteen thirty to prevent folks from using
his alley, using the alley next to his home. Because
he people kept using it as like a short cut,
like a cut through in their wagons, you know. Wagon
traffic kept popping through there, and um, I can see
that being irritating, you know, but it's also like it's
(35:04):
an odd solution to what seems like a simpler problem.
It's a bit extra, it's it's a bit extra. I'm
just gonna share some pictures here in our chat so
we can all see this. But it is a tiny
house if you see, Yeah, it's uh. There are two
windows and one door on the outside, and it, um,
(35:27):
it looks like something you would see in the canals
of Amsterdam, but this is in Alexandria, Virginia. It is
about seven feet wide, as you said, it's twenty five
feet deep. It is two stories. It's only three hundred
and twenty five square feet, and it's it's an alley.
He enclosed the alley and made the outside of it
(35:48):
look like a house because he was so mad about
not just horse drawn wagons, but people hanging out and
maybe doing some alley stuff in his alley. Nobody wants that.
You hate. You hate to see it, you know. It
really reminds me too, Ben of investigations that we've done
in the past for stuff they don't want you to
(36:08):
know about fake buildings, where you can create what appears
to be a building or a storefront or like the
facade of a building in order to cover up things
like electrical conduit, you know, an infrastructure, or like vents
or whatever from subways. And that is what I would
also typically associate with eminent domain, where if they there
(36:29):
was an episode of King of the Hill, I think,
where like the government used eminent domain to like put
a bunch of electrical stuff in a lot near Hank's house,
you know where they hang out in the alley, and
then in the end they were able to convince them
to build a fake house around it. Interesting, Okay, so
that makes it. Yeah, yeah, that's the usual compromise for
(36:52):
nimby stuff. But there is an entire quote unquote apartment
block in New York City that is just a con
ed power station and they will politely ask you to
stop walking around it because we've been there. But yeah,
they were polite, so this okay. So I'm torn about
this one because it sounds like the wagons were going
(37:17):
through so frequently that they were scarring the walls along
the alley and you can see the gouges left by
the wagon wheels in the living room today. So I
feel like, if he has the money and he does it,
and he owns the alley, then it's really an investment, right,
He can a creative solution honestly, for what I would
(37:38):
argue would be considered a menace. So I actually think
this guy wins in terms of like the least spiteful
spite house. You know, sure he's depriving people of their
cut through, but honestly, it's kind of rude to cut
through somebody's yard anyway, and I think kind of illegal, right,
It depends if you hop a fence and cut through
(37:59):
somebody's yard to get through, that's not okay, that's trespassing.
I mean, I'm sure he probably posted some version of
a no trespassing sign first and people just didn't care.
But there was a guy who bought this in nineteen
ninety for only one hundred and thirty five thousand dollars.
It's got a great location, but again it's really small.
(38:21):
It's just across the Potomac, and this guy says it
feels like it's a sailboat cabin. He says, you know,
I've rented it out for a while to people in
the past, and if you walk in now, you'll see
the front door open straight into the living room. There's
(38:42):
a regular, you know, like grown up size sofa, and
then there's just past that a really narrow, steep stairway
to the second floor. And under the stairs is the cupboard.
There's a little microwave oven. On the other wall. You
got the kitchen counter, you get a small sink, you
got under the counter, refrigerator, freezer, also small. There's a
(39:05):
table pushed against the wall. It's a micro house basically,
But you know, this reminds me of some of the
houses I've seen in Philadelphia that are also really small
and constructed just to sort of maximize the use of space.
I've always low key wanted to try living in one
(39:30):
of these places, but the problem is you'd want to
live by yourself. I feel like it's not enough for
two people. As a matter of fact, the guy who
owned it in the nineties one time you rented it
to a couple who wanted to live there and kind
of like a biosphere experiment and want to see if
they could survive living together that closely on around the
(39:51):
World Cruise. I love it. I mean, is this something
that's like, can you airbnb this place? It seems like
the kind of oddity attraction that would you know, encourage
that sort of thing. That's a great question. That's a
great question. It is America's skinniest home. I do not
know if it is up for rent now. There are
pictures on the Internet of folks like going through it,
(40:15):
so I don't know if they're, you know, renting it
or what. But I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised.
There certainly are oddities like that that you can you know,
like the Twilight House, you know, like wherever that is
an upstate New York or No. I think that's actually
an Oregon. Also, I think the Dungeon Family House here
in Atlanta, where like Outcasts and Goody Mob and all
(40:36):
those folks came up and making records in that literal
basement and they called the Dungeon Family. I think you
can still airbnb that place here in Atlanta. I believe
you're correct. You can. Also, if you want to rent
the Hollinsbury Spite House, the skinniest house in the United States,
then you're gonna want to contact Jack Sammy's say, m M.
(41:00):
They live there occasionally. I guess they stop by when
they're in town, but generally speaking, it is a private
residence and you definitely can't just walk through it, which
means our old pal John Hollinsbury was successful, and I
(41:21):
agree with you that means we officially a ridiculous historian
appoint him the winner of this spiked architecture episode. But
just this episode, because again, like I said in the beginning,
I feel like we're going to find multiple examples of
this maybe in future episodes. What do you think, Oh
for sure? I mean it's not that Again, it wasn't
(41:43):
something that I wasn't really aware of until Jeff turned
us on to it. Obviously something a phenomenon that he
has been fascinated with for a long time. And now
I think it's something that I'll keep an eye out
for it just even in like my you know, travels
and day to day and with that, we'd love to
hear your examples of spite architecture in your own neck
of the Global Woods. Now we will go toward I
(42:07):
think at some point we'll have to mention the more
hostile architecture like the patios and the benches studded with
things to prevent people from loitering or laying down, you
know what I mean? Like you see that everywhere. For now,
we love to hear more of the historical fun ones.
You can find us on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
(42:30):
We'll get social media going at some point for the show,
but for now you can also find us as individuals.
That's right. You can find me on Instagram exclusively where
I am at how now, Noel Brown Ben I believe
there are two spots on the seas of social meds
that people can can find you. Ah. Yes, if you
sail the high seas of the Internet, whether Ectocooler or ocean,
(42:53):
you can. You can find me most easily on a
couple places. I'll be on Instagram and a burst of
creativity calling my self app in Bulling Bowl I n
you can find me on Twitter where I'm app in
bulling HSW. Go to both of those places, sneak through
the Instagram stories, slide into the dms. You know what's
on your mind. You got some secret projects on the way.
As always, if you are on Twitter, you're gonna want
(43:16):
to get thee to a particular Twitter handle that of
our own mister Max Williams. Indeed, yes, you can find
me at atl Underscore Max Williams, which is where my
Twitter pages, Twitter pag to just thinking about there it is.
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from
(43:43):
My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.