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The Houses Built to Ruin Lives | Tales From the Bottle

Qxir | May 26, 2026



It takes a lot of time and money to be this petty, but that’s no problem for the people who build “spite houses”.

“A spite house is a building constructed or substantially modified to irritate neighbors or any party with land stakes. Because long-term occupation is not the primary purpose of these houses, they frequently exhibit strange and impractical structures.
Spite houses may deliberately obstruct light, block access to neighboring buildings, or be flagrant symbols of defiance. Spite house are a particularly local kind of hostile architecture meant to annoy/irritate a particular person.
Although, in the US, homeowners generally have no right to views, light, or air, neighbors can sue for a negative easement. In instances regarding a spite build, courts are far more likely to side with the neighboring parties which may have been affected by that build. For example, the Coty v. Ramsey Associates, Inc. case of 1988 ruled that the defendant’s spite farm constituted a nuisance, granting the neighboring landowner a negative easement.
Spite houses, as well as spite farms, are considerably rarer than spite fences. This is partially because modern building codes often prevent the construction of houses likely to impinge on neighbors’ views or privacy, but mostly because fence construction is far cheaper, quicker, and easier than building construction. There are also similar structures known as spite walls or blinder walls.”

More on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spite_house

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Written by Qxir

Comments

This post currently has 36 comments.

  1. @eshleyyy

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    If I had enough mental fortitude to sustain ragebait against that god forsaken church throughout my day to day (and the money to afford it) id defo buy the trans house. I've never felt a stronger aura emanate from a house before

  2. @te1858

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    As a note about the Gay House in Topeka, KS next to the Westboro Baptist Church: saying "2 houses across the street" doesn't really do it justice – the house is literally RIGHT there across the small residential street. If you turn on that corner, you'll the see big ugly WBP super-tall fence (with their "God hates 'frags' " website sign poking out above) on the right, and the rainbow house directly to your left. Source: I grew up in Westboro a stones throw away from the "church", and witnessed the house being built/painted a while back

  3. @Studeb

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    What is so strange about the hold outs in China is that they sometimes build roads around then, sometimes remove millions of people for a dam. So why do the rules change so drastically?

  4. @Stealth86651

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    You know, considering the first thing everyone did when Minecraft first released, I'm genuinely disappointed that earth isn't covered in massive, ancient stone penors just poking out the dirt from civilizations past. I know we've got the drawings and jokes and such, but just surprised no one felt like spending a stupid amount of money/slaves to build one.

  5. @Nacho-nf2hq

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    My favourite holdout house story is from two adjacent houses sharing a large plot of land in the middle of a big city. Some old guy owned both properties and he sold them to a developer who wanted to build an apartment complex, he sold them both under the condition that the ownership would transfer after his death.
    When the tenants of the second house were notified that they would be kicked out as soon as the landlord passes away, they started planting protected species of trees into the large plot of land. By the time the landlord passed away several years later, the developers were unable to build in the land, so the company sold it to a NGO that converted the existing building into a cultural/event centre

  6. @FatalKitsune

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    The bar one seems kind of like a win-win. Bar doesn't have to move and gets a building full of new customers. The residents of the apartment building now have a bar right outside to go to.

  7. @Major-Casse

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    God, i wish i could piss someone off enough that they'd built a house to blot out the sun for me.
    Both because fuck them, but also because I want out of the damn sun.

  8. @GAMEPRO24X

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    It's so nice seeing normal average wage people able to just build homes willy nilly. Fast forward to today where that's not a possibility

  9. @rolandmeiner4970

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    The greatest spite house is the Victor Emmanuel II Monumentin Rome Italy. The king did not like the pope and he built so the pope could not look at his favorite church, the basilica santa maria in arancoeli

  10. @critaspaine

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    The Thirsty Beaver is in Charlotte, NC. It became somewhat famous when Mick Jagger stopped in for drinks and posted it to his Social Media.

  11. @CaptainRex332

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    I was doing some repair work at a mansion and I was told that the owners had a bad neighbour who would constantly brag about how nice his house was.
    so they bought the nearly 10 million dollar house just to tear it down and have a bigger front lawn lmao

  12. @yasirozer4782

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    There are two more spite-itacture that I know of. One in Sarajevo, called Inat Kuca literally meaning Spite house. It's similar to the guy building a house for his ex wife but along the lines of religious divide (surprising in Balkans i know). A muslim guy refused to leave his house which was delineated in the christian part of the town unless they built an exact replica in the muslim quarter and they did.

    The other one I know is sort of a legend but in the Grand Mosque of Bursa, there is a fountain for ablution which is under a transparent dome. The legend goes that an old jewish woman refused to sell his plot to sultan for mosque contruction. They had to built the mosque over and around her small hut. After she died they turned the plot in to a water feature. This seems highly unlikely but a fun little story nonetheless.

  13. @DustinBrooks-tl4bh

    May 26, 2026 at 2:39 am

    Oh..my…lord…my great-great grandparents had a spite house. Nobody ever called it that, but it's a weirdly shaped thing that my great uncle still lives in to this day. It was right next to my great grandmother's house and from all accounts my folks did not all get along back then and this video certainly helped make sense out of a lot of old family stories, so really thank you for that!

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