When John Hollensbury set out to block loiterers from the alley beside his house, it’s doubtful that he knew his creation would come to be one of the most recognizable architectural features of Alexandria nearly 200 years later.
Hollensbury, a brickmaker, built what’s now known as the Spite House at 523 Queen St., Alexandria, in 1830, says Tim Rose, the owner and founder of Alexandria History Tours. As the story goes, Hollensbury lived in the adjacent 525 Queen St., and having grown exasperated with carriages squeezing their way through the alley, wanted to find a way to keep people out. He purchased the plot of land between his home and his neighbor’s for $45.65, Rose says, and built a tiny house using the two existing exterior walls. From the inside, you can even see marks that carriages gouged into the side of the building.
This kind of structure can be called an alley house or a tiny house, but Hollensbury’s motivations earned it the title of the Spite House. The house is just 7 feet wide, with 480 square feet of living space. According to Visit Alexandria, it’s the skinniest historic home in the United States — although the recent tiny house movement means that smaller modern homes may be out there.
This is the smallest and most well-known alley house in Alexandria, but it’s not the only one of its kind. In 2018, bloggers at Old Town Home set out to find other rowhouses like it in the city and discovered three more: 205 King St., 1401 Prince St., and 403 Prince St.
Spite House has been used in a few different ways since Hollensbury’s time. It served as a schoolhouse in the late 1800s, according to Rose. A man named William Hottler purchased it in 1959, Rose says. The current owner, John Sammis, bought it in 1990 for $130,000 and told The New York Times in 2008 that he used it as a weekend home. Today, its assessed value is more than $661,800.
Its bright blue exterior and the drama in its backstory make it a popular tourist attraction — it’s common for visitors to snap a photo in front of the home with arms spread wide, showing off just how narrow it is. But Instagrammers, be aware: It’s still a private residence.
“There’s always a rich irony that people appreciate,” Rose says, “that it may have been built to keep somebody away. It was built out of spite, and now everybody comes to see it.”
Feature image by Kristian Summerer for Visit Alexandria
This story originally ran in our January issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
