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Nobody Called It “Spite House” Until the 1900s
The famous blue building wasn’t always known as the Spite House. For decades, locals just called it “the alley house” or “Hollensbury’s folly.” The first documented use of “Spite House” appeared in a 1950 newspaper article, over a century after it was built.
City directories from 1850-1900 consistently listed it as the “Queen Street Alley Dwelling” without any mention of spite. The house only got its iconic bright blue paint job in 1985 – before that, it was a boring beige that blended in with neighboring buildings…