Latest / Ridiculous History / The Architecture of Spite, Part One: Lovers, Loiterers and Murderers

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The Architecture of Spite, Part One: Lovers, Loiterers and Murderers · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. We're here. We're live and direct, in
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Speaker 1: full effect with some architecture for you. And first off,
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Speaker 1: let's shout out the architect of our podcasts are what
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Speaker 1: an only superproducer, mister Max Williams. Woo. I liked you.
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Speaker 1: I liked your kind of classic radio dj en show.
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Speaker 1: They're live and in full effect with the architects than
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Speaker 1: our podcast set. Yeah, there we go. Let's keep it going.
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Speaker 1: Um yeah, yeah, So I'm Ben your Noel and Noel,
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Speaker 1: You and I might be I don't want to speak
1:07
Speaker 1: for you, my friend, but we might be a little
1:09
Speaker 1: punchy coming in today. What do you think. Yeah, it's
1:11
Speaker 1: from all those children I was punching on the plane.
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Speaker 1: We wouldn't let it go. We were we were like
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Speaker 1: eternally because we hang out a lot, and we were
1:21
Speaker 1: we were eternally in these social situations where if we're
1:25
Speaker 1: not sitting right next to each other. Uh, Noel, you
1:28
Speaker 1: and I are texting like kids passing notes in class. Yeah,
1:32
Speaker 1: that's what texting is really, you know, the end of
1:34
Speaker 1: the day. It's it's a modernized note passing. It was
1:38
Speaker 1: funny too. We had a fla out from Austin. We
1:41
Speaker 1: had a lovely time at south By Southwest meeting people,
1:45
Speaker 1: doing panels, all that kind of stuff. And on the
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Speaker 1: plane back we had a genuine Marvel superhero on our flight. Yes, sir, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I think you were sitting somewhere different in the terminal
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Speaker 1: and I U I texted you because we were on
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Speaker 1: the same flight with two world famous celebrities, well one
2:08
Speaker 1: very world famous celebrity, Anthony Mackie, who plays First Falcon
2:14
Speaker 1: and now the new Captain America at Marvel Films. I
2:16
Speaker 1: didn't know that he was the new Captain America. By
2:18
Speaker 1: the way, that was a giant spoiler for the MCU
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Speaker 1: ben My bad, because I know you care so much,
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Speaker 1: but I don't care. I care enough to be part
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Speaker 1: of the conversation. Who was the second more important celebrity,
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Speaker 1: if I might ask, it was none other than if
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Speaker 1: we could get a drum roll Max or not a
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Speaker 1: drum roll A sinister. Yeah, there it is Jonathan Strickland,
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Speaker 1: aka the Quister, who really wanted us to know he
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Speaker 1: sat He was sitting in first class it was like
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Speaker 1: really insisted upon himself. Yeah, no, for sure, and I'm
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Speaker 1: just glad the plane made it. You know, the nefarious
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Speaker 1: plans didn't didn't cause some sort of in air catastrophe. Um,
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Speaker 1: but no, to be to be true, to be real,
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Speaker 1: let's let's do that for a second. Yeah, we were
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Speaker 1: actually we're actually really friends with Jonathan's strictly. We played
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Speaker 1: mini golf together. This wonderful like I think it had
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Speaker 1: been around since the forties or something that was called
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Speaker 1: like Peter Pan Mini Golf in Austin, and it's this
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Speaker 1: the kind of thing you think of. I think a
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Speaker 1: lot of our hometowns probably have places like this. For me,
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Speaker 1: it was called putt put golf and games where you
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Speaker 1: have these like waterfalls and you know, like giant elephant
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Speaker 1: sculptures and things made a concrete or some other you
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Speaker 1: know material. This place was all like down the rabbit
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Speaker 1: Hole kind of Alice in Wonderland, psychedelic rabbits and literally
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Speaker 1: rabbit holing vibes, creepy clowns. We did some cool social
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Speaker 1: shoots for stuff they don't want you to know, so
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Speaker 1: be on the lookout for those if those things exist. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I think they're gonna work out. I felt pretty good
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Speaker 1: about them, you know, I felt like we I feel
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Speaker 1: like we were having fun. And fun is contagious, right,
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Speaker 1: hopefully still more contagious than COVID. We Uh, this is
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Speaker 1: what I was thinking. I'm really glad you brought this up, Noll,
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Speaker 1: because put Putt is purposely spiteful architecture, and our pal
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Speaker 1: research associate Jeff Bartlett has been obsessed with spiteful architecture
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Speaker 1: for a while. But what do we mean when we
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Speaker 1: talk about spite architecture? Is it what it sounds like?
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Speaker 1: I guess so. I mean, you know, well, in the
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Speaker 1: context of Putt PUTT, it's literally things obstructing your success,
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Speaker 1: you know, barriers to you thinking that that cute, little
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Speaker 1: multicolored ball into that hole. I think we all actually
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Speaker 1: did pretty well. But spite buildings are specifically pieces of
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Speaker 1: construction intended to irritate and in an act of protest.
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Speaker 1: So you know, I think we all hear love curb
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Speaker 1: your enthusiasm. There's a string of episodes in one of
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Speaker 1: the more recent seasons about us opening a spite or
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Speaker 1: because Larry has a beef with Mocha Joe for whatever reason,
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Speaker 1: I can't quite remember what. It doesn't matter because it's petty.
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Speaker 1: It's all about human pettiness that show. So he starts
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Speaker 1: another store next to him, another coffee shop. Thank it's
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Speaker 1: just called Larry's something maybe see like Larry's Mocha Joe.
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Speaker 1: I don't remember. It was something along those lines. And
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Speaker 1: he has like an absurd toilet or something in them.
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Speaker 1: But anyway, it's that's so, that's a spike. This architecture
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Speaker 1: is irrelevant there. It's more about the business itself. Here
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Speaker 1: we're talking about making human pettiness and all of that
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Speaker 1: stuff literally manifest through buildings. Yeah, the idea is that
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Speaker 1: you are going to you're going to get back at
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Speaker 1: someone in a lasting way. And we see spike architecture
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Speaker 1: around the world. It's one of those things where once
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Speaker 1: you recognize what it is, you will have an embarrassment
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Speaker 1: of riches when it comes to finding examples. A lot
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Speaker 1: of the origin stories of these edifices, these structures, these statues,
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Speaker 1: these buildings, a lot of them are you know, kind
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Speaker 1: of embellished. They become a selling point, especially if the
6:11
Speaker 1: thing is a little older. But we're going to encounter
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Speaker 1: some amazing, ridiculous history here, we're talking spurned lovers, we're
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Speaker 1: talking feuds between siblings, and of course we're talking everybody's
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Speaker 1: favorite vengeance. Avengers are the architects of spite buildings sometimes
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Speaker 1: And there's something really interesting here from a great mental
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Speaker 1: philoss article called Houses Built out of Spite by Virginia
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Speaker 1: Claire McGuire, where the author notes, most towns haven't oddity
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Speaker 1: or two an architectural oddity, and it's the building locals
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Speaker 1: love to point out to visitors. This happens pretty often
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Speaker 1: in the United States, but it's everywhere in Europe, you
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Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like you you might drop by
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Speaker 1: for a pint or you're getting you know, you're getting
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Speaker 1: a snack, and then someone says, oh, this building was
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Speaker 1: built in you know, the thirteen hundreds, and it was
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Speaker 1: built because so and so was considered to be a
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Speaker 1: witch like you never know, well, I mean, you know,
7:21
Speaker 1: certainly in the earlier days that you're talking about there,
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Speaker 1: it might have been easier to do one of these things,
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Speaker 1: you know, because property wasn't maybe quite as much as
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Speaker 1: much of a premium as it is today in terms
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Speaker 1: of cost. Because this certainly is a weird flex you know,
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Speaker 1: I mean you gotta have resources, you gotta own property,
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Speaker 1: and you gotta have enough money to throw away on
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Speaker 1: a relatively useless building. Maybe not useless, and it has
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Speaker 1: its own uses, and perhaps it could be designed to
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Speaker 1: obstruct the view or to take away from, you know,
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Speaker 1: the prominence of another building on the block. But they
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Speaker 1: can't also just be constructed. It's almost like cutting your
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Speaker 1: nose off despite your face, where it's like you're dumping
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Speaker 1: all this money just into feeding a feud. One hundred percent.
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Speaker 1: That's the That's the thing. This genre we can call
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Speaker 1: it of architecture is not built to make poetry tangible.
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Speaker 1: It's not built necessarily as some great, you know, veneration
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Speaker 1: of a loved one. It's it's built to like do
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Speaker 1: very petty things like block someone's view and and frustrate
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Speaker 1: the neighbors. It shows what, you know, what it is,
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Speaker 1: spite architecture, spite buildings. They're the first next door energy
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Speaker 1: really and uh yeah, and the motivations vary. But what
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Speaker 1: we wanted to do today and perhaps the first of
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Speaker 1: a recurring series, is to talk about some examples, because
8:52
Speaker 1: you might be surprised. Few ridiculous historians they date back.
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Speaker 1: People have been petty for a while. Maybe we start
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Speaker 1: with the Trevy Fountain. What do you think? Sure, the
9:10
Speaker 1: Trevy Fountain was built in the seventeen hundreds and arguably
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Speaker 1: is an iconic structure in realm, is one of Rome's
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Speaker 1: most iconic attractions. It was erected on the site of
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Speaker 1: it was we know, the Romans were really good at
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Speaker 1: like building aqueducts and like moving water around and kind
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Speaker 1: of created the first systems of plumbing for for you know,
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Speaker 1: for all intents and purposes. And so this was actually
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Speaker 1: built at the site of an important water source in
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Speaker 1: ancient Rome. And it's made of the same material as
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Speaker 1: the Roman Coliseum, which is called travertine stone. And the
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Speaker 1: Trevy Fountain really is, you know, a modern marvel, you know,
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Speaker 1: because of the way that it is able to using
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Speaker 1: gravity alone, funnel water into into a really cool, you know,
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Speaker 1: water feature that's also functional. Yeah, And if you look
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Speaker 1: at this now, what you'll see is the Greek god
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Speaker 1: of the sea, Oceanus. Cool name, not too common in
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Speaker 1: kids today, but Oceanus is surrounded by the mur folk,
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Speaker 1: by mr people and looking upon you know, in a
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Speaker 1: very stately manner of Oceanus is looking upon gallons of
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Speaker 1: flowing water. But if you look very closely, you'll see
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Speaker 1: something called the Ace of Cups. And if you are
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Speaker 1: familiar with fountains and sculpture, then you might say, huh,
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Speaker 1: this one doesn't really fit. This feels like an afterthought.
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Speaker 1: Almost The thing is the Ace of Cups, and the
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Speaker 1: Trevy fountain is not there to be part of the picture.
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Speaker 1: It's not there to be part of the tableau. People
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Speaker 1: believe that it was put there in the service of pettiness.
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Speaker 1: There's there's no water flowing. It kind of gets in
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Speaker 1: the way. You can't really, I don't know see it,
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Speaker 1: And I guess we should point out to know that
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Speaker 1: the Ace of Cups is the street name. The public
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Speaker 1: gave it that name. All this thing does, if you
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Speaker 1: look at it from the right angle, all the Ace
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Speaker 1: of Cups does is block the view of the fountain.
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Speaker 1: And that's where we find a spiteful story. Yeah, it's funny.
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Speaker 1: I'm trying to get a good image of it. Let's see.
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Speaker 1: The Ace of Cups, by the way, is a Tarot
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Speaker 1: card that revolves all around love. You know, whether it's
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Speaker 1: inverted or upside down or whatever it might be. So Okay,
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Speaker 1: the ace of Cups, I guess, is is it this
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Speaker 1: rock feature at the base kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 1: So it's basically okay, oh let me see, Oh here
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Speaker 1: you go. No, no, no no, yeah, okay, so it's no,
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Speaker 1: there's a natural kind of rock feature where the stone
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Speaker 1: is less, you know, hewn, it's just a little more
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Speaker 1: like rough rock faces. And then you have this thing
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Speaker 1: that looks kind of like a vase, right like like
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Speaker 1: sort of like something that you might a planter of
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Speaker 1: some kind, but it doesn't have any plants in it,
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Speaker 1: and it's carved into the stone, sitting on the ridge
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Speaker 1: of you know, the kind of ledge surrounding the structure
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Speaker 1: and sort of globe like with some sort of filigreed
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Speaker 1: little details on it. And then it kind of comes
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Speaker 1: up to a point. But you're right, it is just
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Speaker 1: big enough that from a distance it could obstruct your
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Speaker 1: view of the most important aspects of the fountain itself.
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Speaker 1: And it's actually what would be considered a travertine vase,
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Speaker 1: and it was specifically tied to blocking a view from
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Speaker 1: a nearby salon, you know, or a barber shop. Right,
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Speaker 1: we're getting to it. Yeah, So back in the seventeen hundreds,
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Speaker 1: there's this Italian guy. He's an architect. His name is
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Speaker 1: Nikola Salvi, and he wins a contest sponsored by the
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Speaker 1: pope at the time, the pope was Clement the twelfth,
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Speaker 1: and in seventeen thirty two Nicolas starts working on this sculpture,
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Speaker 1: this installation. It takes a long time. It's not going
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Speaker 1: to the fountain is not going to be done until
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Speaker 1: thirty years later, in seventeen sixty two. Yeah, so for
13:28
Speaker 1: three decades, we want to see both sides here. For
13:31
Speaker 1: three decades, all of the people living in the neighborhood
13:36
Speaker 1: are living with construction. And if you like our pal
13:41
Speaker 1: superproducer Max Williams, have ever had to go about your
13:44
Speaker 1: daily business amid construction, You know, it can wreak havoc
13:48
Speaker 1: on your nerves. You know, traffic is worse. There's an
13:51
Speaker 1: eternal clang clang, You got construction crews yelling and wolf whistling.
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Speaker 1: There was one guy who was perticularly annoyed about this.
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Speaker 1: We've got a good quote about the legend the legendary
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Speaker 1: barber here. Yeah, and the barber was essentially becoming a
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Speaker 1: nuisance for the project. And he was, you know, this
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Speaker 1: is a huge undertaking that was gonna take a long time.
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Speaker 1: There's gonna be some construction, and this barber didn't like
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Speaker 1: the fact that there was this loud, noisy hubbub going
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Speaker 1: on outside of his shop. Of course, you know, Salvey's
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Speaker 1: the architects. He can't. He designed the thing, but he
14:31
Speaker 1: can't necessarily, you know, speed up the process. Right, There's
14:35
Speaker 1: only so much you can do, especially when you're working
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Speaker 1: with like hand tools and stuff like that. But the
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Speaker 1: barber just wouldn't back down. So Salve decided rather than
14:46
Speaker 1: maybe hear the barber out, or placate him in some way,
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Speaker 1: or do what they do with movie shoots where they
14:52
Speaker 1: pay off people a little bit that are inconvenience by
14:55
Speaker 1: the shooting, which of course wouldn't last thirty years. But instead, no,
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Speaker 1: he decided not to take the high your own, but
15:00
Speaker 1: instead to take the road of revenge most sweet or foul,
15:06
Speaker 1: whichever just decides you're on, I guess. So he decided
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Speaker 1: to add in this little feature, which is it really
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Speaker 1: is kind of an example of spite of cutting off
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Speaker 1: your nose aspite your face, because it doesn't fit in
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Speaker 1: with the aesthetic of the thing at all. Like we've
15:21
Speaker 1: already said, it's odd, and it kind of is distracting,
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Speaker 1: but it's also not so distracting that it that it
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Speaker 1: causes any kind of real issue with enjoying the piece
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Speaker 1: from other angles, right right, unless you are looking from
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Speaker 1: the angle of that barber shop. This is a very
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Speaker 1: big like Urslon, as he said, this is a very
15:42
Speaker 1: big screw you. You're never gonna be able to see
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Speaker 1: this from your place since you complain so much. Now,
15:50
Speaker 1: revenge is a dangerous, dangerous sword, right, It does as
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Speaker 1: much harm to the person seeking revenge as it does
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Speaker 1: to the subject of that. And so Nicola Salve doesn't
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Speaker 1: get to see whether his petty plan works because he
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Speaker 1: passes away in seventeen fifty one, well before the project
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Speaker 1: he's completed, eleven years before it's done. And the barbershop,
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Speaker 1: if you go there now, the barbershop is not around either.
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Speaker 1: So it was just one guy said, hey, you're ruining
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Speaker 1: my neighborhood with this construction, and this other guy saying, hey,
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Speaker 1: you're being such a problem. I wish you the worst
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Speaker 1: view in town. Indeed, and you know it still could
16:36
Speaker 1: be worse. I mean, they live in Rome, which is
16:39
Speaker 1: a beautiful, beautiful place. So the views are pretty good
16:43
Speaker 1: no matter which way you look. But there you go.
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Speaker 1: That's a pretty simple piece of spite architecture, right, just
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Speaker 1: a little feature, not even a whole building. Like what
16:51
Speaker 1: if you built a spite fountain that took thirty years,
16:54
Speaker 1: that would be wild and incredibly really a real commitment
16:59
Speaker 1: to the bid. So now we're going to talk about
17:01
Speaker 1: another piece of architecture that's not a fountain or a vaz,
17:06
Speaker 1: but a wall known as the Jealous Wall. And we
17:10
Speaker 1: talked about the ace of cups representing love, and this
17:15
Speaker 1: is about love as well jealousy. It's a very interesting
17:18
Speaker 1: facet of love, isn't it. Yeah, the Jealous Wall definitely
17:22
Speaker 1: sounds like a Depeche Mode song Depeche Listen, You're welcome
17:26
Speaker 1: us Depeche by Guys Depeche. Yeah, this thing is what's
17:31
Speaker 1: called a folly. It's a neo Gothic folly. And remember
17:35
Speaker 1: from our episode on architectural follies and garden Hermit's back
17:41
Speaker 1: in the day. Yeah, this is you know, big put
17:44
Speaker 1: putt energy here. It was built in Ireland at an
17:48
Speaker 1: abbey in Mullenger, County, Westmeath by a guy named Robert Rockfort,
17:54
Speaker 1: also in the seventeen hundreds. In about seventeen sixty, just
17:57
Speaker 1: a year before the Trevy fo this completed. And the
18:01
Speaker 1: whole reason he built this wall was because he was
18:06
Speaker 1: mad at his brother George. And his brother George built
18:10
Speaker 1: a house or an estate you could really call it
18:13
Speaker 1: called Tettenham Park House, and it looked better than Robert's house,
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Speaker 1: Belvedere House, and he was very, very envious technically of
18:25
Speaker 1: his brother. Robert thought that his wife, lady named Mary Molesworth,
18:30
Speaker 1: was having an affair with another one of the Rockfort brothers,
18:36
Speaker 1: and he locked her up in their own home for
18:40
Speaker 1: thirty years. It's just it's just weird, you know. So Okay,
18:45
Speaker 1: the Jealous wall doesn't look good either. It doesn't look
18:48
Speaker 1: like the Trevy Fountain. It's like it's built to look
18:51
Speaker 1: like a ruin. Yeah. It's in Belvidere House in Ireland's
18:55
Speaker 1: county West Smith and it's essentially just yeah, like you said,
19:00
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very unpleasant, unadorned, kind of raggedy wall,
19:06
Speaker 1: like something that was left over from a demolition, you know.
19:10
Speaker 1: And essentially it was kind of that, right, like what
19:14
Speaker 1: was the construction like it doesn't look super creative. It
19:17
Speaker 1: looks like it's built to appear older than it is,
19:21
Speaker 1: and its purpose is entirely to block his brother's view
19:25
Speaker 1: of the Belvedor House. This is a story of three brothers. Really,
19:29
Speaker 1: brotherly feuds are always very interesting because it seems like
19:33
Speaker 1: they go hard and long. Yeah, so these folks are
19:38
Speaker 1: you could call them semi aristocratic, you know, their upper
19:41
Speaker 1: middle class for their time in the seventeen thirties. Robert
19:47
Speaker 1: Rockford wants to marry this artistic eng Stuard from Dublin.
19:53
Speaker 1: I think calling her youngsters unfair. She is only sixteen
19:57
Speaker 1: years old at the time. She's the Mary Molesworth we
19:59
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and Molesworth initially wasn't super vibing with Robert,
20:06
Speaker 1: but they eventually decided to begin a relationship. They settled down.
20:11
Speaker 1: They had four children, but Robert couldn't Robert got what
20:17
Speaker 1: he wished for monkey pass style, and he had some regrets.
20:20
Speaker 1: He was always traveling because first he had political duties
20:25
Speaker 1: and secondly he didn't really like his family. So his
20:29
Speaker 1: young wife would go visit her brother in law Arthur,
20:35
Speaker 1: to get away from taking care of the kids. Arthur
20:37
Speaker 1: was the couple's nearest neighbor, and Robert started getting sour
20:44
Speaker 1: on the marriage, and one day comes up to Mary
20:47
Speaker 1: and says, you're sleeping with my brother Arthur. And Arthur said, dude, no,
20:53
Speaker 1: I'm not sleeping with my sister in law. But then
20:56
Speaker 1: Mary said, yeah, you know what, Rob, I am, and
21:01
Speaker 1: we should get divorced and a counselor unclear whether this
21:06
Speaker 1: actually happened or whether just at the time she thought
21:09
Speaker 1: this would be the easiest way out of the marriage.
21:12
Speaker 1: The heat's going at Arthur, he flees the country, and
21:16
Speaker 1: Irish divorce law is pretty strict, so the couple can't
21:21
Speaker 1: break up. They have to be in that situation, unfortunately
21:24
Speaker 1: has happened to some other people where you're no longer
21:27
Speaker 1: in a romantic relationship and now your roommates. Yeah. I mean,
21:32
Speaker 1: because you have to get the blessing literally of the
21:34
Speaker 1: church to have a divorce. It has to be you know,
21:38
Speaker 1: it has to adhere to some pretty strict guidelines, you know,
21:42
Speaker 1: for them to give that approval. Right, Yeah, one hundred percent.
21:47
Speaker 1: I think you could get something annulled, but that would
21:51
Speaker 1: be the version of like expagation of a legal record. Well,
21:55
Speaker 1: hell Man We even have cases where it was hard
21:58
Speaker 1: for kings to get divorced, right, yes, you know, or
22:01
Speaker 1: they had to change the laws or you know, like
22:03
Speaker 1: you know, kind of finagle some special favors from the
22:07
Speaker 1: clergy right and sort of flex their kingly privilege. But
22:11
Speaker 1: for regular folks it was super super difficult, Yes, super
22:15
Speaker 1: duper difficult. So Robert is now an MP. He's an earl.
22:23
Speaker 1: The British rulers in Dublin like him. He's untouchable, he's
22:27
Speaker 1: beyond the law because he's buddied up with the people
22:30
Speaker 1: who makes the laws. He helps decide what's legal. And
22:34
Speaker 1: he gets mad that basically his ex wife, for all
22:37
Speaker 1: intents and purposes, is in his home. So he builds
22:40
Speaker 1: another house on his land. He says, I'm gonna live
22:43
Speaker 1: here by myself at Belvidere House. Belvidere is really nice
22:48
Speaker 1: at the time. It's palatial, it's mansion. But his brother
22:53
Speaker 1: George builds an even better one on the same grounds.
22:59
Speaker 1: And when Robert sees this, he entirely cuts his brother
23:03
Speaker 1: out of his life. And he's starting to put the
23:05
Speaker 1: pieces together. He's a bit conspiratorial. He says, you know,
23:10
Speaker 1: my brother George had been really close to me, but
23:13
Speaker 1: maybe he kind of turned me against my wife in
23:17
Speaker 1: the first place. And at this point it's just worth
23:20
Speaker 1: saying for those of us playing along at home, Robert
23:24
Speaker 1: sounds like he's kind of a jerk, no, no question
23:26
Speaker 1: about it. At the very least, he was a tricky
23:29
Speaker 1: person to deal with the very strong personality. There are
23:33
Speaker 1: other parts of his story that have some really sketchy
23:37
Speaker 1: details associated with them, like suspicious deaths and all of that,
23:42
Speaker 1: And a lot of these folks were members of his
23:45
Speaker 1: own family. These were, you know, deaths that maybe would
23:50
Speaker 1: have benefited from him, right, including his mother and father,
23:55
Speaker 1: both of whom passed away at times that financially lined
23:59
Speaker 1: up with Robert's interests. Let's just say yeah again, the
24:05
Speaker 1: guy who was above the law was never convicted nor
24:09
Speaker 1: implicated in these things. But it makes you think, so okay,
24:15
Speaker 1: George's house, like we said, Tuttenham, is the reason for
24:19
Speaker 1: this jealous wall, which is a nice, opulent folly ruin
24:24
Speaker 1: and spilled to look like a ruin the same way
24:27
Speaker 1: you know, put put architecture is meant to look fake.
24:30
Speaker 1: Robert could not stand to look at his brother's new house,
24:36
Speaker 1: which was nicer, so he built the Jealous Wall to
24:40
Speaker 1: obstruct the direct line of sight between their homes. Mary,
24:46
Speaker 1: who was basically imprisoned, lived with Robert until he died
24:49
Speaker 1: in the seventeen seventies, and the whole time after they
24:55
Speaker 1: had separated, the whole time she was like, look, I
24:57
Speaker 1: never actually had an affair. I'm just trying to not
25:00
Speaker 1: live with this crazy, crazy dude. And the laws are strange.
25:06
Speaker 1: And Robert would go around to everybody in town and say, oh,
25:10
Speaker 1: that Mary lady, she's crazy, right, It's it's tough and uh.
25:18
Speaker 1: And also, I guess we should note that for the record,
25:22
Speaker 1: pretty sure Robert never called it the jealous Wall. Pretty
25:26
Speaker 1: sure other people were like, Wow, Robert's being a real
25:30
Speaker 1: bagup poop right now. Yeah, backup, owners, Um, you know
25:34
Speaker 1: it's true. I mean it's the same thing. You know,
25:36
Speaker 1: things like this, often you don't really coin the name yourself.
25:39
Speaker 1: Usually even like the name of a manner that sometimes
25:42
Speaker 1: will be coined by the folks that live there. But
25:44
Speaker 1: you know, it's like here in Atlanta, we've got the
25:46
Speaker 1: murder Kroger that folks are desperately involved with the actual
25:49
Speaker 1: business of Kroger desperately trying to rebrand out of that,
25:52
Speaker 1: but it just sticks. You know. They can rebuild it
25:55
Speaker 1: and fancy it up as much as they if they want,
25:58
Speaker 1: but people will always remember it as the Kroger. This actually,
26:01
Speaker 1: this attitude between brothers or like close friends really reminds
26:05
Speaker 1: me a lot of a really incredible film that I
26:08
Speaker 1: think you've seen as well, been The Banshees of Innish
26:10
Speaker 1: Hearing m starring uh, what's his name, Brendan Gleeson and oh,
26:17
Speaker 1: who's that lot? Right? He's awesome, He's phenomenal. That just
26:22
Speaker 1: so you get a watch deleted scene from Batman with him.
26:27
Speaker 1: Is the Joker? Yeah, he's he's a joker with like
26:30
Speaker 1: a real acid burned face. But in the benches finish
26:33
Speaker 1: here and he's sort of like this young, kind of
26:35
Speaker 1: drunk kid who's very, very sad. But the story revolves
26:39
Speaker 1: around a pair who were formerly best friends and then
26:42
Speaker 1: one day one of them decides he doesn't want to
26:45
Speaker 1: be friends anymore, and it's it's just about this this
26:48
Speaker 1: kind of stubbornness, weaponized stubbornness, you know, that just taken
26:53
Speaker 1: to the nth degree, and this kind of feud here
26:56
Speaker 1: in the story about the Jealous Wall really reminds me
26:59
Speaker 1: of the attitude I just want or if there's a
27:01
Speaker 1: historical precedent in Irish culture of that level of stubbornness,
27:05
Speaker 1: you know. And it's Colin Farrell, right, is the other
27:07
Speaker 1: that's why? Who was also in The Batman? Yes, I
27:11
Speaker 1: recognizable as the penguin now that's acting. Uh, it's funny,
27:15
Speaker 1: we're I was hanging out and talking to one of
27:21
Speaker 1: my friends about different people we met in Austin and
27:23
Speaker 1: one of them said, well, any of those people could
27:26
Speaker 1: have been Tilda Swinton. You would never know. So yeah,
27:33
Speaker 1: Colin Farrell got to Swinton level stuff with that. So
27:38
Speaker 1: if you go there now, you'll see Tuttenham House, the
27:40
Speaker 1: fancy new one in this story has fallen into disrepair
27:45
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a ruin. But you can still
27:47
Speaker 1: get a tour of the Belvedere House and they'll tell
27:50
Speaker 1: you the story of the Jealous Wall. You know what,
28:00
Speaker 1: Let's let's stay with houses. Let's do two more houses.
28:04
Speaker 1: There's one guy named John Tyler who built something called
28:09
Speaker 1: the Tyler Spite House in eighteen fourteen, and he built
28:14
Speaker 1: an entire mansion just to stop the local town from
28:20
Speaker 1: building a road. Yeah, that's the whole thing, right, that's
28:24
Speaker 1: another flavor of these kinds of spike houses or spite buildings,
28:30
Speaker 1: is trying to interfere with progress, you know. Yeah, and
28:36
Speaker 1: it was going through his land, to be fair, but
28:40
Speaker 1: he knew there was a local law that set authorities
28:43
Speaker 1: can't build a road if a building's being constructed in
28:47
Speaker 1: the way of that road. So this guy is pretty
28:52
Speaker 1: great at his job. He's got his own foot he's
28:55
Speaker 1: got his own historical footnotes. John Tyler's the first optimologist
28:58
Speaker 1: in America or in the US to perform a cataract operation.
29:04
Speaker 1: And they're in Frederick, Maryland. He is a big wheel.
29:07
Speaker 1: He owns a lot of nice parcels of land that
29:10
Speaker 1: he gets a public auctions. One of those parcels, on
29:14
Speaker 1: the Courthouse Square is directly in the way of the
29:18
Speaker 1: city's plans to extend Record Street south to meet a
29:23
Speaker 1: place called Westpatrick Street. And this guy, I don't know
29:29
Speaker 1: how you feel you all feel about this, but this
29:31
Speaker 1: guy said, I don't want the road cutting across my land.
29:34
Speaker 1: I don't like roads being next to my house, which
29:39
Speaker 1: I don't know. It feels like that's a kind of
29:42
Speaker 1: a rich person problem. Yeah, it's that nimby thing. Yeah,
29:46
Speaker 1: in my backyard. It's the thing we see all the
29:49
Speaker 1: time where it's like people want improvement, they want you know,
29:55
Speaker 1: they want innovation or whatever, or maybe they don't, but
29:58
Speaker 1: they don't want it to inconvenience that anyway, like the
30:00
Speaker 1: construction of it. But you know, this also is sort
30:03
Speaker 1: of an old school attitude about just no, things must
30:06
Speaker 1: stay the same forever. You know, this is my world
30:10
Speaker 1: and y'all just live in it, and you you know,
30:12
Speaker 1: get out of my yard and all of that stuff.
30:14
Speaker 1: So he found a building contractor that was ready to go,
30:18
Speaker 1: like ready to start, you know, work immediately. And again
30:21
Speaker 1: that probably required a little greasing of the wheels monetarily
30:24
Speaker 1: because once again this is a bit of a luxury
30:27
Speaker 1: of the wealthy, the spiked architecture flex. Right. So when
30:32
Speaker 1: the road cruise arrived in the morning, they came upon
30:36
Speaker 1: something alarming. They came upon a giant hole in the
30:40
Speaker 1: ground where the road was meant to go. So, yeah,
30:45
Speaker 1: and in that giant hole there were workmen at work
30:50
Speaker 1: like they do, building a foundation, a foundation for what.
30:55
Speaker 1: All the while our buddy John, doctor John, not that
30:59
Speaker 1: doctor Jib was looking by, you know, sitting in a
31:03
Speaker 1: chair just like I picture, like you described, just hands,
31:07
Speaker 1: fingers steepled and just cackling. If not externally, certainly internally. Yeah,
31:14
Speaker 1: it's nuts. And honestly, kudos to him for actually building
31:18
Speaker 1: the house and following through, because he could have just
31:20
Speaker 1: dug a hole and then said we're going to make
31:24
Speaker 1: a house at some point, but he did build the house.
31:26
Speaker 1: The house is around now. The most recent owners were
31:31
Speaker 1: a family that's now based in the Philippines, the descendants
31:35
Speaker 1: of World War Two naval hero Charles Parsons, Chick to
31:39
Speaker 1: his friends. And when the Parsons were going to sell
31:43
Speaker 1: the house, Myers family, who lived next door took an interest.
31:49
Speaker 1: They had been super involved with historic properties and preservation
31:52
Speaker 1: for several years. They restored their own house and then
31:57
Speaker 1: they also run a be a little bed and breakfast
32:01
Speaker 1: in so that one that one, I think is not
32:05
Speaker 1: as dirty as the jealous wall right, because that guy
32:09
Speaker 1: may have killed some people, right, No, No, that guy was.
32:12
Speaker 1: That guy was trash. The jealous wall fellow maybe even
32:15
Speaker 1: killed his own parents or have them killed. I think
32:17
Speaker 1: the statute of limitations on slander has passed a long sense,
32:21
Speaker 1: but still right, Like, I mean, this guy is essentially
32:24
Speaker 1: building a house in the middle of what would be
32:27
Speaker 1: a road. What were they using ben that allowed them
32:31
Speaker 1: to encroach upon his property in the first place. Is
32:34
Speaker 1: it sort of like that imminent domain thing that we know?
32:37
Speaker 1: This is a little more modern, where like the government
32:39
Speaker 1: can take part of private land for infrastructure improvement as
32:45
Speaker 1: long as they pay fair market value or something along
32:47
Speaker 1: those lines. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's like imminent domain. And
32:51
Speaker 1: that's where you can see it all the time, especially
32:54
Speaker 1: if you're in a growing city or a growing part
32:57
Speaker 1: of town where a road gets widened and someone's front
33:01
Speaker 1: yard as a result, goes back right five ten feet whatever.
33:05
Speaker 1: And imminent domain can be pretty controversial to some people,
33:11
Speaker 1: But it's, like you said, it's like a nimbi thing.
33:14
Speaker 1: Most people like the idea of imminent domain so long
33:18
Speaker 1: as it is not affecting them, right, Just like just
33:22
Speaker 1: like what is it Cape Cod? Is it it's somewhere
33:25
Speaker 1: in the northeast, in the nice area of the Northeast
33:28
Speaker 1: where people generally love wind turbans or wind power, so
33:35
Speaker 1: long as it's not blocking their view of the ocean.
33:39
Speaker 1: That they paid millions of dollars for I don't know,
33:41
Speaker 1: I mean spite. It's crazy. Maybe we do one more example,
33:44
Speaker 1: what do we know about the Hollandsbury spite House. Yeah,
33:48
Speaker 1: I'm sure they coined it as that right when the
33:50
Speaker 1: moment they built there. This house has founded on spite,
33:53
Speaker 1: yes exactly, that's its own kind of foundation. It's a
33:56
Speaker 1: shaky foundation, I would argue, I don't think it's smart
33:59
Speaker 1: to build or do anything based around spite. You know,
34:02
Speaker 1: I'm a firm believer in good vibes. Start with positivity,
34:05
Speaker 1: Start with positivity and and then you know, good things
34:08
Speaker 1: will typically follow um when you start from spite, you know,
34:12
Speaker 1: who knows what could happen. So yeah, most folks are
34:15
Speaker 1: usually content with building a privacy fence around there how
34:19
Speaker 1: their homes, you know, to keep prying eyes away, or
34:23
Speaker 1: to kind of show where their property lines are, you know,
34:27
Speaker 1: through just like a simple a simple fence, a privacy
34:29
Speaker 1: fence or whatever. But John Hollinsbury, who was himself, yeah,
34:35
Speaker 1: he was himself a brickmaker. He built a seven foot
34:40
Speaker 1: wide house in eighteen thirty to prevent folks from using
34:46
Speaker 1: his alley, using the alley next to his home. Because
34:50
Speaker 1: he people kept using it as like a short cut,
34:52
Speaker 1: like a cut through in their wagons, you know. Wagon
34:56
Speaker 1: traffic kept popping through there, and um, I can see
35:00
Speaker 1: that being irritating, you know, but it's also like it's
35:04
Speaker 1: an odd solution to what seems like a simpler problem.
35:08
Speaker 1: It's a bit extra, it's it's a bit extra. I'm
35:11
Speaker 1: just gonna share some pictures here in our chat so
35:15
Speaker 1: we can all see this. But it is a tiny
35:18
Speaker 1: house if you see, Yeah, it's uh. There are two
35:22
Speaker 1: windows and one door on the outside, and it, um,
35:27
Speaker 1: it looks like something you would see in the canals
35:29
Speaker 1: of Amsterdam, but this is in Alexandria, Virginia. It is
35:33
Speaker 1: about seven feet wide, as you said, it's twenty five
35:36
Speaker 1: feet deep. It is two stories. It's only three hundred
35:40
Speaker 1: and twenty five square feet, and it's it's an alley.
35:45
Speaker 1: He enclosed the alley and made the outside of it
35:48
Speaker 1: look like a house because he was so mad about
35:52
Speaker 1: not just horse drawn wagons, but people hanging out and
35:56
Speaker 1: maybe doing some alley stuff in his alley. Nobody wants that.
36:01
Speaker 1: You hate. You hate to see it, you know. It
36:03
Speaker 1: really reminds me too, Ben of investigations that we've done
36:06
Speaker 1: in the past for stuff they don't want you to
36:08
Speaker 1: know about fake buildings, where you can create what appears
36:13
Speaker 1: to be a building or a storefront or like the
36:15
Speaker 1: facade of a building in order to cover up things
36:19
Speaker 1: like electrical conduit, you know, an infrastructure, or like vents
36:22
Speaker 1: or whatever from subways. And that is what I would
36:25
Speaker 1: also typically associate with eminent domain, where if they there
36:29
Speaker 1: was an episode of King of the Hill, I think,
36:31
Speaker 1: where like the government used eminent domain to like put
36:35
Speaker 1: a bunch of electrical stuff in a lot near Hank's house,
36:39
Speaker 1: you know where they hang out in the alley, and
36:41
Speaker 1: then in the end they were able to convince them
36:44
Speaker 1: to build a fake house around it. Interesting, Okay, so
36:49
Speaker 1: that makes it. Yeah, yeah, that's the usual compromise for
36:52
Speaker 1: nimby stuff. But there is an entire quote unquote apartment
36:58
Speaker 1: block in New York City that is just a con
37:01
Speaker 1: ed power station and they will politely ask you to
37:04
Speaker 1: stop walking around it because we've been there. But yeah,
37:08
Speaker 1: they were polite, so this okay. So I'm torn about
37:12
Speaker 1: this one because it sounds like the wagons were going
37:17
Speaker 1: through so frequently that they were scarring the walls along
37:20
Speaker 1: the alley and you can see the gouges left by
37:23
Speaker 1: the wagon wheels in the living room today. So I
37:27
Speaker 1: feel like, if he has the money and he does it,
37:30
Speaker 1: and he owns the alley, then it's really an investment, right,
37:33
Speaker 1: He can a creative solution honestly, for what I would
37:38
Speaker 1: argue would be considered a menace. So I actually think
37:41
Speaker 1: this guy wins in terms of like the least spiteful
37:45
Speaker 1: spite house. You know, sure he's depriving people of their
37:49
Speaker 1: cut through, but honestly, it's kind of rude to cut
37:51
Speaker 1: through somebody's yard anyway, and I think kind of illegal, right,
37:57
Speaker 1: It depends if you hop a fence and cut through
37:59
Speaker 1: somebody's yard to get through, that's not okay, that's trespassing.
38:02
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure he probably posted some version of
38:04
Speaker 1: a no trespassing sign first and people just didn't care.
38:09
Speaker 1: But there was a guy who bought this in nineteen
38:15
Speaker 1: ninety for only one hundred and thirty five thousand dollars.
38:18
Speaker 1: It's got a great location, but again it's really small.
38:21
Speaker 1: It's just across the Potomac, and this guy says it
38:27
Speaker 1: feels like it's a sailboat cabin. He says, you know,
38:31
Speaker 1: I've rented it out for a while to people in
38:35
Speaker 1: the past, and if you walk in now, you'll see
38:38
Speaker 1: the front door open straight into the living room. There's
38:42
Speaker 1: a regular, you know, like grown up size sofa, and
38:47
Speaker 1: then there's just past that a really narrow, steep stairway
38:51
Speaker 1: to the second floor. And under the stairs is the cupboard.
38:54
Speaker 1: There's a little microwave oven. On the other wall. You
38:57
Speaker 1: got the kitchen counter, you get a small sink, you
39:00
Speaker 1: got under the counter, refrigerator, freezer, also small. There's a
39:05
Speaker 1: table pushed against the wall. It's a micro house basically,
39:09
Speaker 1: But you know, this reminds me of some of the
39:12
Speaker 1: houses I've seen in Philadelphia that are also really small
39:18
Speaker 1: and constructed just to sort of maximize the use of space.
39:24
Speaker 1: I've always low key wanted to try living in one
39:30
Speaker 1: of these places, but the problem is you'd want to
39:32
Speaker 1: live by yourself. I feel like it's not enough for
39:35
Speaker 1: two people. As a matter of fact, the guy who
39:38
Speaker 1: owned it in the nineties one time you rented it
39:41
Speaker 1: to a couple who wanted to live there and kind
39:44
Speaker 1: of like a biosphere experiment and want to see if
39:46
Speaker 1: they could survive living together that closely on around the
39:51
Speaker 1: World Cruise. I love it. I mean, is this something
39:54
Speaker 1: that's like, can you airbnb this place? It seems like
39:56
Speaker 1: the kind of oddity attraction that would you know, encourage
40:00
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. That's a great question. That's a
40:03
Speaker 1: great question. It is America's skinniest home. I do not
40:07
Speaker 1: know if it is up for rent now. There are
40:11
Speaker 1: pictures on the Internet of folks like going through it,
40:15
Speaker 1: so I don't know if they're, you know, renting it
40:18
Speaker 1: or what. But I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised.
40:21
Speaker 1: There certainly are oddities like that that you can you know,
40:24
Speaker 1: like the Twilight House, you know, like wherever that is
40:27
Speaker 1: an upstate New York or No. I think that's actually
40:29
Speaker 1: an Oregon. Also, I think the Dungeon Family House here
40:32
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, where like Outcasts and Goody Mob and all
40:36
Speaker 1: those folks came up and making records in that literal
40:39
Speaker 1: basement and they called the Dungeon Family. I think you
40:42
Speaker 1: can still airbnb that place here in Atlanta. I believe
40:45
Speaker 1: you're correct. You can. Also, if you want to rent
40:50
Speaker 1: the Hollinsbury Spite House, the skinniest house in the United States,
40:54
Speaker 1: then you're gonna want to contact Jack Sammy's say, m M.
41:00
Speaker 1: They live there occasionally. I guess they stop by when
41:03
Speaker 1: they're in town, but generally speaking, it is a private
41:09
Speaker 1: residence and you definitely can't just walk through it, which
41:13
Speaker 1: means our old pal John Hollinsbury was successful, and I
41:21
Speaker 1: agree with you that means we officially a ridiculous historian
41:25
Speaker 1: appoint him the winner of this spiked architecture episode. But
41:31
Speaker 1: just this episode, because again, like I said in the beginning,
41:35
Speaker 1: I feel like we're going to find multiple examples of
41:38
Speaker 1: this maybe in future episodes. What do you think, Oh
41:41
Speaker 1: for sure? I mean it's not that Again, it wasn't
41:43
Speaker 1: something that I wasn't really aware of until Jeff turned
41:46
Speaker 1: us on to it. Obviously something a phenomenon that he
41:49
Speaker 1: has been fascinated with for a long time. And now
41:51
Speaker 1: I think it's something that I'll keep an eye out
41:53
Speaker 1: for it just even in like my you know, travels
41:56
Speaker 1: and day to day and with that, we'd love to
41:58
Speaker 1: hear your examples of spite architecture in your own neck
42:03
Speaker 1: of the Global Woods. Now we will go toward I
42:07
Speaker 1: think at some point we'll have to mention the more
42:09
Speaker 1: hostile architecture like the patios and the benches studded with
42:17
Speaker 1: things to prevent people from loitering or laying down, you
42:21
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like you see that everywhere. For now,
42:24
Speaker 1: we love to hear more of the historical fun ones.
42:26
Speaker 1: You can find us on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
42:30
Speaker 1: We'll get social media going at some point for the show,
42:33
Speaker 1: but for now you can also find us as individuals.
42:37
Speaker 1: That's right. You can find me on Instagram exclusively where
42:39
Speaker 1: I am at how now, Noel Brown Ben I believe
42:42
Speaker 1: there are two spots on the seas of social meds
42:45
Speaker 1: that people can can find you. Ah. Yes, if you
42:48
Speaker 1: sail the high seas of the Internet, whether Ectocooler or ocean,
42:53
Speaker 1: you can. You can find me most easily on a
42:56
Speaker 1: couple places. I'll be on Instagram and a burst of
42:59
Speaker 1: creativity calling my self app in Bulling Bowl I n
43:02
Speaker 1: you can find me on Twitter where I'm app in
43:04
Speaker 1: bulling HSW. Go to both of those places, sneak through
43:08
Speaker 1: the Instagram stories, slide into the dms. You know what's
43:11
Speaker 1: on your mind. You got some secret projects on the way.
43:13
Speaker 1: As always, if you are on Twitter, you're gonna want
43:16
Speaker 1: to get thee to a particular Twitter handle that of
43:20
Speaker 1: our own mister Max Williams. Indeed, yes, you can find
43:24
Speaker 1: me at atl Underscore Max Williams, which is where my
43:28
Speaker 1: Twitter pages, Twitter pag to just thinking about there it is.
43:33
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from
43:43
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