In the 1870s, a San Francisco undertaker refused to sell his small house to a railroad millionaire; instead of taking it, the tycoon built a towering spite fence around it

Some people say no to money. Far fewer say no to a railroad millionaire, and fewer still keep saying it while a wall rises outside their windows. On San Francisco's Nob Hill, an undertaker named Nicholas Yung did exactly that. His small house became the centre of a well-known property dispute after he refused to sell to Charles Crocker, who responded by building a 40-foot fence around three sides of the property, as Arnold Woods recounts in his Western Neighborhoods Project article. Putting the undertaker's stand beside a much more recent one in Seattle shows what changed, what did not, and why the law had so little to say about it.A holdout refuses to sell while neighbors doLinda Holden Givens defines the term in her HistoryLink.org essay Edith Wilson Macefield: A House Is Your Home, describing a holdout as someone who refuses to sell property while everyone around her does. The essay adds that in China such houses are known as dingzihu, or nail houses, because they stay put while developments are built around them.Crocker wanted the whole block and Yung would not sellArnold Woods tells the San Francisco side in The Big 4 on Nob Hill: A Closer Look from the Western Neighborhoods Project. Crocker had his house at 1100 California Street built by the same architectural firm, S. C. Bugbee & Son, that designed Leland Stanford's house. Crocker owned a vast area, but he wanted the whole block, and Yung refused to sell. Crocker therefore built a 40-foot fence around three sides of Yung's property, and a footnote in Woods's article traces the account to a San Francisco Chronicle article dated July 27, 1878. Woods writes that after Yung died in 1880, his heirs later sold the property and the house and fence were torn down. Other accounts say Yung's widow, Rosina, held on until she died in 1902 and that their daughters sold the lot to the Crocker family in 1904.Edith Macefield turned down $1 million in Seattle in 2006Givens's essay connects Macefield to a long-standing tradition in Seattle. Princess Angeline, the daughter of Chief Seattle, lived in a waterfront cabin in Seattle despite an 1865 ordinance calling for the removal of Native Americans from the town. She remained there until her death on May 31, 1896. However, she declined both offers due to several reasons which are clearly stated in the essay.One wall shut a neighbor in and another wall rose around herThe San Francisco and Seattle cases ended in a similar picture of a small house walled in, but the walls began with different intentions. Crocker built his fence to enclose Yung's property on three sides. Givens's essay says mall construction began in spring 2006 and had enclosed Macefield's house by 2007. Moreover, the essay mentions that Barry Martin, who was the project supervisor, had introduced himself to her, assured her of help in case of any problem and gradually became her friend. She died on June 15, 2008, leaving the house and its contents to Barry Martin in her will. In July 2009, Martin sold the home to Greg Pinneo of Reach Returns for $310,000. Bridge Group also decided not to buy the adjacent Mike's Chili Parlor because of possible public disapproval.American courts gave holdouts little protection from wallsA neighbor like Yung had few legal options, and the American Planning Association's August 1958 report, Fences, explains why. At common law, an owner was entitled to make reasonable use of his land, and obstructing a neighbor's light, air, or view was no ground for a lawsuit. The English doctrine of ancient lights did not apply in the United States, a position American courts had taken long before 1958, as in the New York Supreme Court's 1838 decision in Parker v. Foote. Because courts were reluctant to treat spite fences as private nuisances, several states, including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Washington, New York and Kentucky, passed statutes allowing suits over them. In the 1880 Connecticut case Gallagher v. Dodge, the motive test was introduced: a fence or building could be considered spiteful if a person of ordinary judgment viewed it that way. The same report noted that the New York act set a fence height limit of ten feet.Cities that tried to ban such fences through zoning struggled. In the 1956 Ohio case State v. Zumpano, a court struck down a Norton Township zoning provision that prohibited unnecessary structures, including fences, whose apparent purpose was to annoy or damage an adjacent owner, because the provision lacked uniform standards for what was prohibited. The report concludes that a city's only direct control over spite fences is height.Seattle's holdouts left spite mounds and a shack on the waterfrontThe HistoryLink article connects Macefield to a long-standing tradition in Seattle. Princess Angeline, the daughter of Chief Seattle, lived in a waterfront cabin in Seattle despite an 1865 ordinance calling for the removal of Native Americans from the town. She remained there until her death on May 31, 1896, as documented by HistoryLink.org. The article also points out that when Denny Hill was leveled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, certain buildings remained perched on "spite mounds."The Crocker block became the site of Grace CathedralAfter the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed the Nob Hill mansions, the Crocker family donated their plot to the Episcopal Diocese, which had lost its Grace Cathedral in the catastrophe as well. The cornerstone of Grace Cathedral was laid on January 24, 1910. Construction of the present cathedral began in the late 1920s and proceeded in stages before the completed building was consecrated on November 20, 1964.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.