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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and

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Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about spite houses this week.

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Speaker 1: I love a spite house. You know why Why Because

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Speaker 1: I love a grudge. I love a grudge. I think

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Speaker 1: this came up when we were in Iceland on the

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Speaker 1: bus one day where I was like, I love my

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Speaker 1: grudges and I tend to them like a garden, and

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Speaker 1: I love holding grudges. And there was a little bit

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Speaker 1: of like shock. Yeah, there was some like what you

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Speaker 1: do what I love a grudge? I love them, I do.

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Speaker 1: I don't have a grudge unless someone earns it, and

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Speaker 1: then then you don't grudge forever. You don't make the

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Speaker 1: team again next year or ever again, you're off the list.

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Speaker 1: But I also just love that level of petty where

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Speaker 1: you're like, you know what, construction project. But as we

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Speaker 1: noted in this in that episode, some of these spite

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Speaker 1: houses don't seem like spite houses, right. I especially liked

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Speaker 1: talking about the Alameda spite House and the fact that

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Speaker 1: Froling Sun was like, no, no, dude, we were just

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Speaker 1: poor and that's what we could afford to build. He

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Speaker 1: couldn't buy another lot, and we wanted and he wanted

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Speaker 1: a place to raise his family. So yeah, that's the

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Speaker 1: house we made. I sort of love that. It's very

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Speaker 1: charming in its own right. Yeah, there were a couple

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Speaker 1: things I wanted to say about John Hollinsbury. Okay, one

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Speaker 1: is that because I was really trying to find out

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Speaker 1: more about him and information was pretty sparse. But one

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Speaker 1: thing that I did keep finding in old newspapers for

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Speaker 1: these ads that he would place selling things in the

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Speaker 1: local paper, like this is a man who would have

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Speaker 1: loved like Facebook marketplace or like Craigslist, because there were

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Speaker 1: a lot of things of like one. He was a brickmaker,

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Speaker 1: so these make sense. But the way the ads were placed,

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Speaker 1: it was like if you would like a thousand bricks

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Speaker 1: to my house, they're really really like please call on

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Speaker 1: John Hollinsbury and that would be it, Or like I

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Speaker 1: have carriage horses to sell, please come to my house.

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Speaker 1: Like they were all very charming that way. And I

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Speaker 1: wonder too if because he had built this house, everybody

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Speaker 1: just knew which one was his house, so he didn't

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Speaker 1: put anything other than come to my house come to

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Speaker 1: the hollands Bury home. There's another thing that I couldn't

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Speaker 1: definitively tie to him. I found a patent for a

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Speaker 1: John W. Hollinsbury of Alexandria, Virginia in I think it's

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Speaker 1: from eighteen twenty four and it's for a breech loading cannon.

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Speaker 1: And I couldn't find any other John Hollinsbury's that were

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Speaker 1: in the area. But I also couldn't be certain it

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Speaker 1: was him, so he may have also invented a cannon,

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Speaker 1: in which case, you know, he doesn't only have to

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Speaker 1: have the one identity of making a spite house, even

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Speaker 1: though that's what everybody knows him for. M I just

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Speaker 1: found that interesting. Yeah, you can't build a spite house now,

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Speaker 1: it's too hard. Nobody will allow it, nobody will give

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Speaker 1: you the permits to build a spite house. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Most municipalities have carefully recognized like if your structure is

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Speaker 1: going to be obstructive to your neighbors in a way

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Speaker 1: that is not reasonable, you can't build this. Or if

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Speaker 1: the size and shape of it are in a way

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Speaker 1: that doesn't make a lot of sense, like they can't

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Speaker 1: be you just can't do it, which is Yeah, I'm like,

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Speaker 1: is this gonna be an art form that will be

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Speaker 1: lost over yet? Well, I think in addition to building

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Speaker 1: codes and zoning requirements and stuff like that, now there

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Speaker 1: is much more coordinated and easy to activate group and

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Speaker 1: a lot of communities to argue against housing and for whatever.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like the like, there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: building codes that make it really a lot easier now

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Speaker 1: than before the days of building codes to bog down

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Speaker 1: a project in approvals and hearings and public comment and

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Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. So like, in addition to the

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Speaker 1: building codes themselves, which I feel like, a building code

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Speaker 1: that prevents you from building an inherently unsafe thing that

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Speaker 1: is so close to the neighbor's house that like you

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Speaker 1: have to like with less than an inch of space

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Speaker 1: between your house and the neighbors. I'm like, I foresee

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Speaker 1: this causing big problems in the future. So like, in

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Speaker 1: addition to having laws to prevent that kind of building,

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Speaker 1: like also having a system that makes it a lot

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Speaker 1: easier to derail projects basically, right, Yeah, I mean there,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting, right, the idea of building code gets into

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Speaker 1: a whole other space, right, because there are certainly a

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Speaker 1: lot of building codes that have been created that have

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Speaker 1: very little to do with yeah, safety, Yeah, concern for

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Speaker 1: anybody that are like inherently racist. Like, there's certain kinds

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Speaker 1: of buildings you can't put in a neighborhood that would

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Speaker 1: be primarily occupied by marginalized communities that are very racially oriented,

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Speaker 1: and it's designed to keep those communities from thriving and

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Speaker 1: having any kind of upward mobility for anyone. There are

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Speaker 1: a lot of those, but yeah, I think, yeah, for

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Speaker 1: a lot of spite houses, it's more like, please don't

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Speaker 1: ruin your neighbor's life because you had a fight. Yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of building codes. We've

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Speaker 1: talked about so many fires especially, Yeah, and like building

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Speaker 1: codes are important and necessary to build structures that hopefully

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Speaker 1: are not deadly fire traps from the moment that they're opened.

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Speaker 1: But also like there's a lot of building codes that

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Speaker 1: have been passed in the last decades and centuries that

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Speaker 1: just create a bottleneck for actually building the housing that

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Speaker 1: communities need. Yeah, of the reasons we have a housing

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Speaker 1: crisis in a lot of the United States, a lot

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Speaker 1: of giant empty houses and people would nowhere to live. Simultaneously,

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Speaker 1: one of the one of the one of the causes.

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Speaker 1: Please please do not email me link the explanations about

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Speaker 1: the causes of the housing crisis. I'm aware right, Like

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Speaker 1: I said, there are a lot of other spite houses

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Speaker 1: that I want to talk about. If anyone listening is

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Speaker 1: a big fan of the Plumb Island spite House and

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Speaker 1: the efforts going on right now to try to say

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Speaker 1: that house, please know I know about it, and it's

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Speaker 1: top of the list for next time around. But part

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Speaker 1: of why it didn't go on this one there's some

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Speaker 1: legal and financial juggling going on right now. It's an

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Speaker 1: older structure and it's in very bad shape, and there

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Speaker 1: is the threat that it's going to be torn down,

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Speaker 1: but there are a lot of people that are trying

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Speaker 1: to save it, and that is in like a stasis

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Speaker 1: state it appears right now, at least in terms of

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Speaker 1: what I was able to uncover, So I didn't want

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Speaker 1: to just like leave it as kind of a floppy

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Speaker 1: I don't know right Maybe it's still there when we publish.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it got torn down in the two weeks between

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Speaker 1: when we recorded and when it goes live, So that's

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Speaker 1: why that's not on there. But it is on my

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Speaker 1: list for a future version of this. I think of these,

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Speaker 1: the only one we know for sure is a spite

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Speaker 1: house is the doctor Tyler one MM, who was like, no, no,

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Speaker 1: no road here, I'm under construction. I love that idea

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Speaker 1: so much. Bias for action for spite is very much

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Speaker 1: in my wheelhouse of love. That might be my love language. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: well in that case in particular, right, because he did

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Speaker 1: try to do everything through legal channels. You know, he

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Speaker 1: went to city planning meetings, he went through various offices

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Speaker 1: and filed protest documentation and tried to explain that that

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Speaker 1: was gonna you know, impact him in a negative way,

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Speaker 1: and they were like too bad. So he, you know,

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Speaker 1: took matters into his own hands. Yeah, SPIKEE spite House.

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Speaker 1: I love you, spite House. If you would like a

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Speaker 1: thousand bricks, just come to my house. I gotcha. I

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Speaker 1: don't know why that's so funny to me. Yeah, just

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Speaker 1: come to my house, dude, I gotcha, I gotcha. It

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Speaker 1: occurs to me that it would be fun to do

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Speaker 1: a tour of spite houses. Yeah, but the problem is

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Speaker 1: that many of these are privately owned homes. Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the people that own I'm trying to remember which one

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Speaker 1: it might be the Alimita Spite spite House, which again

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Speaker 1: is not really a spite house. In the interview with

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Speaker 1: the East Bay Times that they did, they mention like

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Speaker 1: people are not especially respectful of them as a private residence.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like she the woman that was interviewed, told

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Speaker 1: a story about how like at one point on a

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Speaker 1: Halloween a trick or trader just walked in and started

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Speaker 1: commenting on the house, and she was like, not someone

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Speaker 1: she had invited in, just like barrel Paspers and that

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Speaker 1: like people will just come and knock on the door

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Speaker 1: and stuff. So that would be the downfall or the

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Speaker 1: downside I guess of living in a unique structure like that.

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Speaker 1: I mean the flip right, the one in Alexandria. Those

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Speaker 1: people seem pretty accustomed to people doing that. However, it

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Speaker 1: is also not their only or primary residence, so it

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Speaker 1: probably is not as disruptive to their day to day

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Speaker 1: lives right to have tourists standing outside it, reaching their

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Speaker 1: arms out and going, look how skinny this house is,

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Speaker 1: which brings me to my last point. Okay, people may

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Speaker 1: have noticed that we avoided superlatives like this is the

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Speaker 1: skinniests spied out. This is the sure several houses claim

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Speaker 1: that I think, unless there's one I haven't found that

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Speaker 1: the one in Alexandria is the narrowest at seven feet,

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Speaker 1: because the others that we mentioned are all like ten

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Speaker 1: feet the other two that we mentioned, but I don't

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Speaker 1: know for sure, and I don't you know, They're all

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Speaker 1: just interesting in their own right. Right, I'm here for

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Speaker 1: this spite house. There are also a couple I want

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Speaker 1: to cover that are no longer exist, and so it's

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Speaker 1: going to take a little more work to find information

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Speaker 1: and make sure I have the write info on them.

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Speaker 1: But spite houses. We talked about founding father Robert Morris

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Speaker 1: this week. Yeah, I have some thoughts about him. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I like how we both just sort of stopped. Tell

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Speaker 1: us your thoughts, Holly. Well, first, I'll include a thing

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Speaker 1: that I didn't put in the episode. There are a

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Speaker 1: couple things about his youth and his father that are

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Speaker 1: not really substantiated. One is that his father died in

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Speaker 1: a freak accident where there were two ships involved. A

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Speaker 1: fly allegedly landed on his father's nose and he swatted

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Speaker 1: it away, and the other ship took that as a

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Speaker 1: signal to fire their cannons and that's how he died.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true, but it's an interesting story. Oh. Also,

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Speaker 1: how would anyone survive to know there was a fly

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Speaker 1: involved at that point? I don't know. I have that

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Speaker 1: question with a lot of stories like this. Seems like

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Speaker 1: no one would have been there to witness this, So

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Speaker 1: how do we know? And if they were, who are they?

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Speaker 1: The other thing that can't really be substantiated at all,

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Speaker 1: and I wondered it from the gate in reading the

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Speaker 1: little we have about his youth, I was like, wait,

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Speaker 1: why was his dad in the colonies already while he

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Speaker 1: was still in England? Like what is going on there?

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Speaker 1: And the supposition by some historians is that Robert may

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Speaker 1: have been born out of wedlock. He appears to have

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Speaker 1: been raised by his maternal grandmother, So it could just

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Speaker 1: be that his mom was somehow not in the picture

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Speaker 1: for another reason, but that his grandmother raised him until

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Speaker 1: he was old enough to go to be with his father. Okay, again,

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Speaker 1: that's not substantiated, but I wanted to mention it in

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Speaker 1: case anybody's like, yeah, but what exactly was going on there?

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Speaker 1: I don't know for sure that seems like a sound theory.

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Speaker 1: But can you imagine I can if someone like a

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Speaker 1: congressman was like, oh yeah, I was on this committee

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Speaker 1: that was supposed to raise money and we didn't raise

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Speaker 1: money enough, so I just wrote a check. What like

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Speaker 1: if it's supposed to be an official government channel situation,

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Speaker 1: right right, it seems very odd to me somebody's gonna

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Speaker 1: write us and be like that happens all the time.

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Speaker 1: Here are examples and maybe, but I don't think so.

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Speaker 1: I feel like everything I could say about this is

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Speaker 1: just gonna get me yelled at. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So

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Speaker 1: that's fascinating. I also do like that the way the

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Speaker 1: investigation into his dealings as Superintendent of Finance, uh huh

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Speaker 1: is very like, don't worry about it. We looked into it. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: I kind of wondered whether or how his using his

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Speaker 1: position to enrich himself led to any perceptions or standards

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Speaker 1: about doing that in the future, because there are still

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Speaker 1: plenty of ways that people serving in the US government

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Speaker 1: can enrich themselves through their jobs. Yeah, some of which

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Speaker 1: are basically illegal, but others are not. And so I

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Speaker 1: was just I don't know, it was I was curious

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Speaker 1: about that and that also seems like the you know,

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Speaker 1: somebody's PhD thesis, not something that we can figure out

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Speaker 1: in a week on our podcast. Yeah, yeah, because there

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Speaker 1: it may have been a factor, but we would have

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Speaker 1: to comb through like all of the writing of every

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Speaker 1: legislator who introduced bills or whatever trying to reform and

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Speaker 1: amend those kinds of practices, which, as you just said,

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Speaker 1: it is not really something we can do over the

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Speaker 1: course of a week. Yeah, it's I definitely found it

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Speaker 1: very very intriguing. How much in reading about him, it

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Speaker 1: splits so fifty to fifty of super crazy he was.

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Speaker 1: You know, he's the reason that the US exists because

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Speaker 1: without the money that he came up with, we never

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Speaker 1: would have been able to stand up to Britain blah

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Speaker 1: blah blah, et cetera, et cetera, and other who are

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Speaker 1: like super shady. Right, it splits completely down the middle. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: My take is always that probably irritatingly middle ground of

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Speaker 1: like both can be true. You know, he clearly did

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Speaker 1: get a lot of stuff done. He clearly was close

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Speaker 1: with a lot of the people that the US likes

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Speaker 1: to hold up as like icons of our foundation. But

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Speaker 1: it doesn't mean, he was in a little slippery about

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Speaker 1: some of it. I loved that quote from the William

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Speaker 1: and Mary nineteen thirty four piece where it was like

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Speaker 1: it was like, no, absolutely here, here are all the

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Speaker 1: ways this could easily work for him to be doing

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Speaker 1: this right and juggling money on the back end in

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Speaker 1: ways that no one could ever track, especially when you

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Speaker 1: consider that when he took that job, he was like,

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Speaker 1: by the way, I have rules. Those rules are nobody's

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Speaker 1: the bossami, which is you know a thing. Uh, let's

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Speaker 1: put kitties in charge. It will be like naps in

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Speaker 1: the sunbeam all day. Maybe I was just saying. One

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Speaker 1: of our newer kiddies is diabolical. She's super smart and

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Speaker 1: a little bit sneaky, so I don't think she should

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Speaker 1: be in charge. As much as I love and adore her,

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Speaker 1: but she's like I really expect to wake up in

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Speaker 1: the middle of the night and have her tiny paws

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Speaker 1: gripped around my hand with a pen in it, signing

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Speaker 1: away the deed to my house. She's just like that,

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Speaker 1: smart and diabolical. And her sister is very sweet and

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Speaker 1: not a fool, but she's not that diabolical, right right?

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Speaker 1: I like in the nature or nurture question, Like here's

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Speaker 1: an obvious example, Like, yeah, they are from the same litter,

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Speaker 1: and one of them owns the house already and probably

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Speaker 1: has power of attorney I don't even know about. And

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Speaker 1: the other one is like I just want to sleep

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Speaker 1: in my tower. Yeah, anyway, I had to turn it

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Speaker 1: to kitties in the interest of levity. Yeah, just remember,

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Speaker 1: all the stories that you hear are told from someone's

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Speaker 1: point of view. I'll say that about history, all of history.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we talk about this. We're both pretty transparent

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Speaker 1: about that with us, like it's told from our point

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Speaker 1: of view, and we try to take in all of

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Speaker 1: the the information we can from a variety of sources

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Speaker 1: and ideally primary sources, and we try to be objective

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Speaker 1: as we evaluate that information. But everybody comes to every

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Speaker 1: table with a little bit of bias, whether they're conscious

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Speaker 1: of it or not. And even if you're conscious of

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Speaker 1: it and working against it, you can't eradicate it. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: always keep that in mind, just as a rule of thumb. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: and I will also say, this is totally true everything

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Speaker 1: that you just said, and it's also totally true that

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Speaker 1: it's possible to take it just a bad faith reading

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Speaker 1: of things and leave stuff out on purpose, just tell

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Speaker 1: a specific narrative of for example, the founders as flawless idealists,

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Speaker 1: which to me, I mean, from my perspective, is not

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Speaker 1: very interesting. Now, it's more meaningful to me to know

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Speaker 1: that the people that were trying to build something new

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Speaker 1: and what they hoped would be better were messy, because like,

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Speaker 1: it's it's that that blaki and thing of like you

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Speaker 1: can't really be good unless you know of evil, unless

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Speaker 1: you you know, like it's it's not it's not realistic,

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Speaker 1: and it also creates this complete fictional stand and of

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Speaker 1: behavior that's not realistic. Right, It's it's more interesting to

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Speaker 1: know they were grappling with their own mess and yet

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Speaker 1: still managed to pull through a fairly ideological government plan

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Speaker 1: with a lot of money problems, Yeah, and also problems

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Speaker 1: about who was fully a person, right, I mean, obviously

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Speaker 1: that's like a huge thing. There are a lot of

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Speaker 1: problems with you know, the the early stages of the

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Speaker 1: US story that get really really occluded in a lot

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Speaker 1: of discussion of them. But they are also a lot

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Speaker 1: of founding fathers that we don't talk about very much,

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Speaker 1: and we might do some more on on some more

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Speaker 1: of them, because they're they're there. They count in the

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Speaker 1: in the mix. But Robert Morris is not somebody I

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Speaker 1: was ever taught a lot about in school either. I

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Speaker 1: don't really remember ever being taught about him in school.

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Speaker 1: That doesn't mean I wasn't ever, but I have no

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Speaker 1: memory of it. Yeah. But yeah, definitely not in the

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Speaker 1: mix of all the heavy hitters, even though he was

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Speaker 1: a heavy hitter. Yeah, so interesting, Just again history, history

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Speaker 1: comes with bias. If you are headed into some time

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Speaker 1: off this weekend, I hope it's amazing. I hope you

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Speaker 1: can give your brain arrest from the tumult of the world,

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Speaker 1: and that you can do some things you love, be

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Speaker 1: with the people and animals and whatever else you love,

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Speaker 1: the art you love, and that you are cool to

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Speaker 1: everybody that you encounter, and everybody is cool to you.

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Speaker 1: If this is not your time off coming up and

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Speaker 1: you have obligations or you have to work, I also

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Speaker 1: hope everybody's really nice to you and nobody's in jerk,

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Speaker 1: and that we all try to do better. I can

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Speaker 1: always be improving because I have dark thoughts. Sometimes I

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Speaker 1: got mad at somebody on the phone last week. It happens.

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Speaker 1: We're working on it, but in any case, I hope

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Speaker 1: everybody is finding whatever pockets of joy you can. We

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Speaker 1: will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode

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Speaker 1: and then on Monday with something brand new. Stuff you

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Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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