“The Spite House” in Alexandria, Virginia

See that tiny blue house wedged in between the white and red ones? It was built in 1830 and is only 7 feet wide. (And here I complain about my family room being too narrow!) The Spite House, as it’s called, has two stories but only 325 square feet. It even appears to be considerably shorter than its neighbors.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! named it the narrowest house in America. According to a New York Times article:

Structurally, it’s more of an enclosed alley than a house — the brick walls of older houses on either side form the painted brick walls in the living room. It’s called the Spite House by some because John Hollensbury, the owner of one of the adjacent houses, built it in 1830 to keep horse-drawn wagons and loiterers out of his alley.

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The home’s current owner, Jack Sammis, was interviewed about it on Oprah and told her that back when it was still an alley, there “was walking traffic and also carriage traffic—if you look closely on the walls, you can see the indentations where the wagon wheels would brush up against the wall.”
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The owner says it was “quite a challenge” to make a kitchen (above and below) work in the tiny space allotted. The kitchen has a freezer, fridge, four-burner stove, and an oven. There’s also extra storage space under a bench seat and extra cabinets in the corner. You can see where they tucked a small microwave on a shelf under the stairs in the photo below:

There’s definitely a lot of family togetherness in the Spite House! They don’t use this as their full-time residence, however, preferring to think of it as their “pied-a-terre.” The owner purchased it for $135,000 in 1990.

Photo above shows the upstairs landing. On Oprah, decorator Nate Berkus said The Spite House “has so much soul.” The backyard “garden” space (below) is as narrow–and charming–as the rest of the house.
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Big thanks go to Maya for forwarding the NYT article about the Spite House to me. Check out Springtree Road to see what interesting things she’s taking photos of today.

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All photos shown in this post are the copyright of The New York Times, the Oprah Show, and Alexandria Daily Photo.

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