Behind the Scenes Minis: Spiteful Robert

Holly talks about how impossible it is to build a spite house now, thanks to municipal building codes. She also shares some uncertain stories of the childhood of Robert Morris.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about spite houses this week.
I love a spite house. You know why Why Because

(00:23):
I love a grudge. I love a grudge. I think
this came up when we were in Iceland on the
bus one day where I was like, I love my
grudges and I tend to them like a garden, and
I love holding grudges. And there was a little bit
of like shock. Yeah, there was some like what you
do what I love a grudge? I love them, I do.
I don't have a grudge unless someone earns it, and

(00:44):
then then you don't grudge forever. You don't make the
team again next year or ever again, you're off the list.
But I also just love that level of petty where
you're like, you know what, construction project. But as we
noted in this in that episode, some of these spite
houses don't seem like spite houses, right. I especially liked

(01:05):
talking about the Alameda spite House and the fact that
Froling Sun was like, no, no, dude, we were just
poor and that's what we could afford to build. He
couldn't buy another lot, and we wanted and he wanted
a place to raise his family. So yeah, that's the
house we made. I sort of love that. It's very
charming in its own right. Yeah, there were a couple

(01:28):
things I wanted to say about John Hollinsbury. Okay, one
is that because I was really trying to find out
more about him and information was pretty sparse. But one
thing that I did keep finding in old newspapers for
these ads that he would place selling things in the
local paper, like this is a man who would have
loved like Facebook marketplace or like Craigslist, because there were

(01:51):
a lot of things of like one. He was a brickmaker,
so these make sense. But the way the ads were placed,
it was like if you would like a thousand bricks
to my house, they're really really like please call on
John Hollinsbury and that would be it, Or like I
have carriage horses to sell, please come to my house.
Like they were all very charming that way. And I

(02:12):
wonder too if because he had built this house, everybody
just knew which one was his house, so he didn't
put anything other than come to my house come to
the hollands Bury home. There's another thing that I couldn't
definitively tie to him. I found a patent for a

(02:33):
John W. Hollinsbury of Alexandria, Virginia in I think it's
from eighteen twenty four and it's for a breech loading cannon.
And I couldn't find any other John Hollinsbury's that were
in the area. But I also couldn't be certain it
was him, so he may have also invented a cannon,

(02:57):
in which case, you know, he doesn't only have to
have the one identity of making a spite house, even
though that's what everybody knows him for. M I just
found that interesting. Yeah, you can't build a spite house now,
it's too hard. Nobody will allow it, nobody will give
you the permits to build a spite house. Yeah. Yeah.

(03:17):
Most municipalities have carefully recognized like if your structure is
going to be obstructive to your neighbors in a way
that is not reasonable, you can't build this. Or if
the size and shape of it are in a way
that doesn't make a lot of sense, like they can't
be you just can't do it, which is Yeah, I'm like,

(03:41):
is this gonna be an art form that will be
lost over yet? Well, I think in addition to building
codes and zoning requirements and stuff like that, now there
is much more coordinated and easy to activate group and

(04:03):
a lot of communities to argue against housing and for whatever.
Oh yeah, like the like, there are a lot of
building codes that make it really a lot easier now
than before the days of building codes to bog down

(04:26):
a project in approvals and hearings and public comment and
that kind of stuff. So like, in addition to the
building codes themselves, which I feel like, a building code
that prevents you from building an inherently unsafe thing that

(04:47):
is so close to the neighbor's house that like you
have to like with less than an inch of space
between your house and the neighbors. I'm like, I foresee
this causing big problems in the future. So like, in
addition to having laws to prevent that kind of building,
like also having a system that makes it a lot

(05:07):
easier to derail projects basically, right, Yeah, I mean there,
it's interesting, right, the idea of building code gets into
a whole other space, right, because there are certainly a
lot of building codes that have been created that have
very little to do with yeah, safety, Yeah, concern for

(05:28):
anybody that are like inherently racist. Like, there's certain kinds
of buildings you can't put in a neighborhood that would
be primarily occupied by marginalized communities that are very racially oriented,
and it's designed to keep those communities from thriving and
having any kind of upward mobility for anyone. There are

(05:51):
a lot of those, but yeah, I think, yeah, for
a lot of spite houses, it's more like, please don't
ruin your neighbor's life because you had a fight. Yeah, Yeah,
I think there are a lot of building codes. We've
talked about so many fires especially, Yeah, and like building
codes are important and necessary to build structures that hopefully

(06:12):
are not deadly fire traps from the moment that they're opened.
But also like there's a lot of building codes that
have been passed in the last decades and centuries that
just create a bottleneck for actually building the housing that
communities need. Yeah, of the reasons we have a housing
crisis in a lot of the United States, a lot

(06:32):
of giant empty houses and people would nowhere to live. Simultaneously,
one of the one of the one of the causes.
Please please do not email me link the explanations about
the causes of the housing crisis. I'm aware right, Like
I said, there are a lot of other spite houses
that I want to talk about. If anyone listening is

(06:52):
a big fan of the Plumb Island spite House and
the efforts going on right now to try to say
that house, please know I know about it, and it's
top of the list for next time around. But part
of why it didn't go on this one there's some
legal and financial juggling going on right now. It's an
older structure and it's in very bad shape, and there

(07:15):
is the threat that it's going to be torn down,
but there are a lot of people that are trying
to save it, and that is in like a stasis
state it appears right now, at least in terms of
what I was able to uncover, So I didn't want
to just like leave it as kind of a floppy
I don't know right Maybe it's still there when we publish.
Maybe it got torn down in the two weeks between

(07:35):
when we recorded and when it goes live, So that's
why that's not on there. But it is on my
list for a future version of this. I think of these,
the only one we know for sure is a spite
house is the doctor Tyler one MM, who was like, no, no,
no road here, I'm under construction. I love that idea

(07:56):
so much. Bias for action for spite is very much
in my wheelhouse of love. That might be my love language. Yeah,
well in that case in particular, right, because he did
try to do everything through legal channels. You know, he
went to city planning meetings, he went through various offices

(08:21):
and filed protest documentation and tried to explain that that
was gonna you know, impact him in a negative way,
and they were like too bad. So he, you know,
took matters into his own hands. Yeah, SPIKEE spite House.
I love you, spite House. If you would like a

(08:43):
thousand bricks, just come to my house. I gotcha. I
don't know why that's so funny to me. Yeah, just
come to my house, dude, I gotcha, I gotcha. It
occurs to me that it would be fun to do
a tour of spite houses. Yeah, but the problem is
that many of these are privately owned homes. Yes, yeah,

(09:06):
the people that own I'm trying to remember which one
it might be the Alimita Spite spite House, which again
is not really a spite house. In the interview with
the East Bay Times that they did, they mention like
people are not especially respectful of them as a private residence.

(09:31):
Oh yeah, like she the woman that was interviewed, told
a story about how like at one point on a
Halloween a trick or trader just walked in and started
commenting on the house, and she was like, not someone
she had invited in, just like barrel Paspers and that
like people will just come and knock on the door
and stuff. So that would be the downfall or the

(09:54):
downside I guess of living in a unique structure like that.
I mean the flip right, the one in Alexandria. Those
people seem pretty accustomed to people doing that. However, it
is also not their only or primary residence, so it
probably is not as disruptive to their day to day
lives right to have tourists standing outside it, reaching their

(10:15):
arms out and going, look how skinny this house is,
which brings me to my last point. Okay, people may
have noticed that we avoided superlatives like this is the
skinniests spied out. This is the sure several houses claim
that I think, unless there's one I haven't found that

(10:38):
the one in Alexandria is the narrowest at seven feet,
because the others that we mentioned are all like ten
feet the other two that we mentioned, but I don't
know for sure, and I don't you know, They're all
just interesting in their own right. Right, I'm here for
this spite house. There are also a couple I want
to cover that are no longer exist, and so it's

(10:59):
going to take a little more work to find information
and make sure I have the write info on them.
But spite houses. We talked about founding father Robert Morris
this week. Yeah, I have some thoughts about him. Yeah,

(11:24):
I like how we both just sort of stopped. Tell
us your thoughts, Holly. Well, first, I'll include a thing
that I didn't put in the episode. There are a
couple things about his youth and his father that are
not really substantiated. One is that his father died in

(11:46):
a freak accident where there were two ships involved. A
fly allegedly landed on his father's nose and he swatted
it away, and the other ship took that as a
signal to fire their cannons and that's how he died.
I don't know if that's true, but it's an interesting story. Oh. Also,

(12:08):
how would anyone survive to know there was a fly
involved at that point? I don't know. I have that
question with a lot of stories like this. Seems like
no one would have been there to witness this, So
how do we know? And if they were, who are they?
The other thing that can't really be substantiated at all,
and I wondered it from the gate in reading the

(12:30):
little we have about his youth, I was like, wait,
why was his dad in the colonies already while he
was still in England? Like what is going on there?
And the supposition by some historians is that Robert may
have been born out of wedlock. He appears to have

(12:52):
been raised by his maternal grandmother, So it could just
be that his mom was somehow not in the picture
for another reason, but that his grandmother raised him until
he was old enough to go to be with his father. Okay, again,
that's not substantiated, but I wanted to mention it in
case anybody's like, yeah, but what exactly was going on there?

(13:14):
I don't know for sure that seems like a sound theory.
But can you imagine I can if someone like a
congressman was like, oh yeah, I was on this committee

(13:34):
that was supposed to raise money and we didn't raise
money enough, so I just wrote a check. What like
if it's supposed to be an official government channel situation,
right right, it seems very odd to me somebody's gonna
write us and be like that happens all the time.
Here are examples and maybe, but I don't think so.

(13:54):
I feel like everything I could say about this is
just gonna get me yelled at. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So
that's fascinating. I also do like that the way the
investigation into his dealings as Superintendent of Finance, uh huh
is very like, don't worry about it. We looked into it. Yeah. Well,

(14:20):
I kind of wondered whether or how his using his
position to enrich himself led to any perceptions or standards
about doing that in the future, because there are still

(14:42):
plenty of ways that people serving in the US government
can enrich themselves through their jobs. Yeah, some of which
are basically illegal, but others are not. And so I
was just I don't know, it was I was curious

(15:02):
about that and that also seems like the you know,
somebody's PhD thesis, not something that we can figure out
in a week on our podcast. Yeah, yeah, because there
it may have been a factor, but we would have
to comb through like all of the writing of every
legislator who introduced bills or whatever trying to reform and

(15:26):
amend those kinds of practices, which, as you just said,
it is not really something we can do over the
course of a week. Yeah, it's I definitely found it
very very intriguing. How much in reading about him, it
splits so fifty to fifty of super crazy he was.

(15:50):
You know, he's the reason that the US exists because
without the money that he came up with, we never
would have been able to stand up to Britain blah
blah blah, et cetera, et cetera, and other who are
like super shady. Right, it splits completely down the middle. Yeah. Yeah.
My take is always that probably irritatingly middle ground of

(16:11):
like both can be true. You know, he clearly did
get a lot of stuff done. He clearly was close
with a lot of the people that the US likes
to hold up as like icons of our foundation. But

(16:32):
it doesn't mean, he was in a little slippery about
some of it. I loved that quote from the William
and Mary nineteen thirty four piece where it was like
it was like, no, absolutely here, here are all the

(16:54):
ways this could easily work for him to be doing
this right and juggling money on the back end in
ways that no one could ever track, especially when you
consider that when he took that job, he was like,
by the way, I have rules. Those rules are nobody's
the bossami, which is you know a thing. Uh, let's

(17:14):
put kitties in charge. It will be like naps in
the sunbeam all day. Maybe I was just saying. One
of our newer kiddies is diabolical. She's super smart and
a little bit sneaky, so I don't think she should
be in charge. As much as I love and adore her,
but she's like I really expect to wake up in

(17:36):
the middle of the night and have her tiny paws
gripped around my hand with a pen in it, signing
away the deed to my house. She's just like that,
smart and diabolical. And her sister is very sweet and
not a fool, but she's not that diabolical, right right?
I like in the nature or nurture question, Like here's

(17:59):
an obvious example, Like, yeah, they are from the same litter,
and one of them owns the house already and probably
has power of attorney I don't even know about. And
the other one is like I just want to sleep
in my tower. Yeah, anyway, I had to turn it
to kitties in the interest of levity. Yeah, just remember,

(18:24):
all the stories that you hear are told from someone's
point of view. I'll say that about history, all of history.
I mean, we talk about this. We're both pretty transparent
about that with us, like it's told from our point
of view, and we try to take in all of
the the information we can from a variety of sources
and ideally primary sources, and we try to be objective

(18:45):
as we evaluate that information. But everybody comes to every
table with a little bit of bias, whether they're conscious
of it or not. And even if you're conscious of
it and working against it, you can't eradicate it. So yeah,
always keep that in mind, just as a rule of thumb. Yeah. Well,
and I will also say, this is totally true everything

(19:05):
that you just said, and it's also totally true that
it's possible to take it just a bad faith reading
of things and leave stuff out on purpose, just tell
a specific narrative of for example, the founders as flawless idealists,

(19:26):
which to me, I mean, from my perspective, is not
very interesting. Now, it's more meaningful to me to know
that the people that were trying to build something new
and what they hoped would be better were messy, because like,
it's it's that that blaki and thing of like you

(19:48):
can't really be good unless you know of evil, unless
you you know, like it's it's not it's not realistic,
and it also creates this complete fictional stand and of
behavior that's not realistic. Right, It's it's more interesting to
know they were grappling with their own mess and yet
still managed to pull through a fairly ideological government plan

(20:16):
with a lot of money problems, Yeah, and also problems
about who was fully a person, right, I mean, obviously
that's like a huge thing. There are a lot of
problems with you know, the the early stages of the
US story that get really really occluded in a lot

(20:39):
of discussion of them. But they are also a lot
of founding fathers that we don't talk about very much,
and we might do some more on on some more
of them, because they're they're there. They count in the
in the mix. But Robert Morris is not somebody I
was ever taught a lot about in school either. I
don't really remember ever being taught about him in school.

(21:01):
That doesn't mean I wasn't ever, but I have no
memory of it. Yeah. But yeah, definitely not in the
mix of all the heavy hitters, even though he was
a heavy hitter. Yeah, so interesting, Just again history, history
comes with bias. If you are headed into some time
off this weekend, I hope it's amazing. I hope you

(21:25):
can give your brain arrest from the tumult of the world,
and that you can do some things you love, be
with the people and animals and whatever else you love,
the art you love, and that you are cool to
everybody that you encounter, and everybody is cool to you.
If this is not your time off coming up and
you have obligations or you have to work, I also

(21:46):
hope everybody's really nice to you and nobody's in jerk,
and that we all try to do better. I can
always be improving because I have dark thoughts. Sometimes I
got mad at somebody on the phone last week. It happens.
We're working on it, but in any case, I hope
everybody is finding whatever pockets of joy you can. We

(22:08):
will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode
and then on Monday with something brand new. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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