The Montlake Slice of Spite | Montlake Spite House 1925

The Seattle, WA’s 1925 Spanish Revival style Spite House in the historic Montlake area is at its slimmest only 55 inches, and at its widest, 15 feet. The wedge-shaped home has 860 square feet of living space, two bedrooms, and two bathrooms within its two stories.

Several theories explain the house’s construction. While married, the wife lived in an adjoining house with her husband. However, when they divorced, the court only granted her a 3,090-square-foot parcel of their shared property. She took vengeance by building a small home to block his front yard view, since she couldn’t get a loan to build somewhere else. The second theory is that the owner built the house in retribution for a land dispute. Third, the owner built it to punish a neighbor who offered too little money to purchase the land.

Given its unusual shape and likely need for custom design and materials, the estimated cost to build the home in 1925 was $5,000–$7,000. One hundred years later, it would be $84,800-$118,720.

In the first recorded sale in 1983, the Spite House sold for $50,000. There are no records of people who occupied and maintained the house from the 1930s to the 1980s. Nor are there records of ownership changes between 1983 and 2018. In 2019, Emily Cangie and her husband bought the home, restored it, and lived there until 2025. In May, they listed it for $799,000 and sold it in July for $745,000.

The owners, who bought the house in 2019, updated the living space and promoted its history. You can find a virtual tour of the house on YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/.v=XgqGo8Zoy1k.

They changed its once-yellow exterior to an elegant blue-gray hue. However, regardless of the calming blue-gray tones, a significant problem remains. To get to the second floor, one must exit and use the separate entrance on the side.