The official version of events -- wagon damage and loiterers -- is the most widely repeated, but Alexandria has never settled on a single explanation. A second account holds that Hollensbury and his neighbor at 521 Queen Street were once close friends whose relationship soured in the late 1820s after the neighbor's carriage repeatedly damaged Hollensbury's property. Building a house that blocked the alley was, in this telling, an act of cold revenge against a former friend. The third and gentlest version claims Hollensbury built the structure as a playhouse for his two daughters, Julia and Harriett, and that one of them later lived in it as an adult. Whichever origin story you prefer, the result is the same: a two-story house squeezed into a space that would barely qualify as a hallway, earning it the nickname 'Spitehouse' almost from the day it was finished.

The house is 25 feet deep and totals 350 square feet across two floors, with a walled rear garden and patio adding an extra seven-by-twelve-foot patch of outdoor space. The interior is an exercise in creative compression. Downstairs, exposed ceiling beams span a living room fitted with a faux fireplace and a black wooden mantel. Behind it, a galley kitchen manages to contain a four-burner gas range, a sink, a small refrigerator tucked under the counter, and a built-in bench that pulls out to seat a fourth person at the dining table. Upstairs, a claw-footed bathtub sits in the rear room, and the bedroom features a double bed turned sideways with the wall serving as its headboard. A cast-iron fire shield hangs on the facade, a nineteenth-century marker indicating the owner had paid the local fire company for protection -- a small detail that somehow makes the whole enterprise feel more permanent than a grudge should.

The Hollensbury house is the most famous, but Alexandria harbors four spite houses in total, all dating from the 1800s. The oldest stands at 205 King Street, built around 1812 at a comparatively spacious eleven feet nine inches wide; it has served as a private home, a cobbler's shop, and a boutique. The house at 403 Prince Street, likely built by Samuel Janney before 1883, measures seven feet nine inches -- just three inches wider than Hollensbury's. And at 1401 Prince Street, a one-story spite house measuring eight feet two inches wide was constructed in the 1890s and has since been absorbed into the building next door. Together they form an unofficial architectural tradition, as though something in the soil of Old Town produces neighbors so contentious they would rather build walls than mend fences.

In 1990, businessman Jack Sammis spotted a newspaper listing for the house -- the first time it had been on the market in 25 years. He signed the purchase contract that same day for $130,000. Sammis, who had grown up in a narrow Baltimore rowhouse, knew exactly what he was buying. The house has since been featured by CBS News, Architectural Digest, Bloomberg News, and The Guardian, and was shown on The Oprah Winfrey Show. It has become a fixture of Alexandria's guided history tours and appears on postcards, napkins, and holiday tour maps. Tourists knock on the front door asking for tours. As of 2022, the property was valued at $601,674 -- a considerable return on John Hollensbury's original $45.65 alley lot. The spite, it turns out, was a sound investment.