The
development (and re-development) of neighborhoods is quite an
unstoppable force. When real estate values go up and businesses get
excited, there is usually little that can stand in the way of modern
glass and concrete structures filled with condos and sandwich shops.
But,
every once in a while, a few determined or just plain stubborn
individuals will decide they don’t want to step aside for the
steamroller of progress. And most of the time, progress will just decide
to go around.
In China, a country where aggressive development has rankled many citizens,
these kinds of homes have been nicknamed “nail houses” because they
stick out like a single nail on a board that just refuses to get
hammered down. Here are a few of the most interesting of these dedicated
homeowners.
Edith Macefield’s “Up” Home in Seattle, Washington
Edith Macefield had lived quite a fascinating life before a parking garage made her a local folk hero.
Born
in Oregon in 1921, Macefield was raised by her mother and two helpful
godfathers. A teenaged Macefield joined the war effort a few months
before she old enough to do so, got away with it, and spent those years
in England tending to children orphaned during World War II. She was
living out her senior years in her home in Seattle’s Ballard
neighborhood when gentrification came knocking—a major development was
going up and they needed Macefield out.
Macefield
refused to sell and leave her home, forcing the frustrated developers
to offer her $1 million for the house and the land it sat on. Macefield
still said no. Locals cheered Macefield’s determination as a stand
against the homogenization of the neighborhood and construction moved
forward without her spot of land.
As
walls of concrete went up around her little plot of heaven, Macefield
didn’t seem to mind and would simply turn up the volume on her opera
music: “I went through World War II, the noise doesn’t bother me,” she
commented.
During
construction an unlikely bond formed between Macefield and Barry
Markin, the project’s construction superintendent. Markin had taken to
talking to Macefield and started driving her to appointments and the
store. Their relationship even inspired Markin to write a book about getting to know her.
Sadly,
Macefield passed away in 2008. She left Martin the house; by selling
it, he was able to pay for his children to go to college.
Despite
the Macefield’s passing, the house continues to generate interest as
many ponder its final fate. There were originally plans by OPAL
Community Land Trust to purchase the home and barge it to Orcas Island,
where it would have been a home for lower-income families. However, a
Kickstarter campaign failed to raise the funds to complete the move.
Now, its future looks bleak, as reported by the Puget Sound Business Journal, which proclaims that the home will likely be demolished. The home has “used up its useful life and then some” says Paul Thomas, the broker who assisted in the sale of the house.
There is hope that the house, and Macefield, could be forever memorialized on the silver screen. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a film is in development
from producers Will Gluck and Jodi Hildebrand of Olive Bridge
Entertainment that would focus on the house and Macefield and Martin’s
unique friendship. So, even if the house doesn’t stay standing forever,
there’s still a chance this saga will get the Hollywood ending it
deserves.
A Unique Compromise in Osaka, Japan
In
the 1980s in Osaka, Japan, business was booming and development was on
the minds of many. One group that saw some economic opportunity were the
owners of a family-run charcoal plant that has been in Osaka since the
1870s.
While
the charcoal business was no longer profitable, the land their business
stood on was in high demand and the property owners made plans to construct an impressive office building on the site of their 19th-century business.
There
was only one problem: Plans were already in motion for an expansion of
the Hanshin Expressway and part of it was supposed to cut right through
the exciting new building plans.
The
owners were unwilling to squash their dreams of building a modern
office tower and city planners needed the highway expansion. In an
amazing compromise (reached after five years), both sides agreed to
allow the highway ramp to pass right through the office building, turning what may have been just another building into a local landmark.
Today the office still buzzes with activity and is known around town as “The Beehive.”
The Notch In The World’s Largest Department Store
Few
destinations have as many interesting real estate stories as New York
City; the curious case of the corner of 34th Street and Broadway is one
of them.
It
is on that spot that in the late 1890s that owner Rowland H. Macy had
prepared to build a newer and bigger version of its popular department
store store, then located on 14th Street. The new flagship would
eventually earn the title of “World’s Largest.”
Macy’s
plan to move uptown was a “prescient one” according to Jeanne Gardner
Gutierrez, a research fellow at the New York Historical Society’s Center
for the Study of Women’s History. At that time, most retail was
clustered around 14th Street, but she states that “between 1900 and 1915
most of the major stores had moved uptown. Affluent customers were
moving north, away from the packed precincts of lower Manhattan.” Moving
farther north would also place Macy’s closer to Times Square, then
becoming a popular entertainment and nightlife area.
While
making plans to construct the store around 1900, Macy’s had expected to
buy the final piece of landed needed: a small building right at the
corner of 34th and Broadway. But an agent of Macy’s rival department
store Siegel-Cooper heard of Macy’s designs on the land and made a huge
offer to the owner of the property on the corner.
The rumor
is that Siegel-Cooper wanted Macy’s old location on 14th Street and was
planning to use the corner plot as a bargaining chip to get it. But
Macy’s did not play ball: The company held on to their previous plot of
land and just built their massive new building around the tiny corner.
Such
real estate shenanigans were the result of an especially contentious
time in New York retail. Explains Gutierrez: “In the 1890s, when
Siegel-Cooper’s opened their first department store in New York and
Macy’s was planning its move uptown, retail was furiously competitive.”
She
says that retail was very “cut-throat” in that period, with large
retailers battling one another, while small businesses struggled to stay
afloat as these massive department stores took over.
The
building that was on the corner was demolished soon after the new
Macy’s store opened and a new five-story structure was put up in its
place in 1902. That building was purchased by another developer and sold
in 1911 for a whopping $1 million (around $25 million in today’s
dollars); that sale earned the plot of land the nickname the “One
Million Dollar Corner.”
The
new Macy’s store represented a new age in retail, both in the United
States and around the world. The store featured new retail advancements
such as escalators, lighted window displays, and air-conditioning.
Gutierrez points out that “in his landmark 1993 book on consumer
society, Land of Desire, historian William Leach described
Macy’s as ‘a mythical symbol of American mass consumption’ and ‘the
epitome of economic force’.”
The
1902 building stands there to this day, though it has historically been
overshadowed by a massive Macy’s billboard atop its frame.
A Nail House of Defiance In China
Individuals who stand against the still-roaring wave of building that has swept over China in the past decade have the opportunity to take on a larger significance.
Many frustrated Chinese citizens have seen themselves pushed aside to make room for the government’s grand development plans. Such was the case for Ms. Wu Ping, a homeowner in Chongqing who held on to her home for much longer than the average Chinese citizen usually does.
Wu’s
battles with the government allowed her house to remain standing while
construction crews dug a massive pit around it. By the time of Wu’s
defiance in early 2007, China’s National People’s Conference had passed a
law that gave Chinese property owners more rights than they had enjoyed
before in such disputes. Supposedly in years past a homeowner in a
dispute might return to find their home already demolished if they were
putting up too fierce of a fight.
Wu’s
personal tenacity and flair for the dramatic—she once stood stoically
in front of a locked gate to her home in a bright red coat while TV
cameras rolled—may have allowed her to keep her home standing for as
long as it did.
In an unsurprising ending for a government that doesn’t love dissension, the home was eventually demolished later that year after Wu had been compensated for the land.
Trying to Ward Off Developers For Eternity
While
the resistance of Wu Ping was impressive, it was not quite as
remarkable as the stand one Chinese family took against a land takeover.
In Taiyuan, China, the construction of a new apartment complex was slowed when one family refused to sell a plot of land where a departed relative was buried.
The
family of the interred man, Chang Jinzhu, was unwilling to sell because
the developer could not answer why they had selected that particular
spot of land for the apartments.
The
standoff created an unusual and almost hauntingly beautiful scene: a
thick pillar of earth topped with the remnants of an old graveyard,
surrounded by the concrete and scaffolds of the new building’s
foundation. It looked less like a construction site than a frame from
one of Tim Burton’s stop-motion animated features.
A compensation agreement was eventually reached in 2012
between the developer and the family to move the gravesite to a new
location. In preparation for the relocation, the company constructed a
platform and ramp that allowed the family to pay its final respects
prior to the move.
A Portland Lawyer Remained Happy Where He Was
When
Portland transit authority TriMet sought to build a new transit hub
with some fuzzy ties to nearby Portland State University, they
encountered a landowner who was especially well prepared to hold on his
century-old house—a lawyer.
Randal Acker is an attorney who had just recently purchased and fixed up the 1894 Victorian home to use as space for his law office when TriMet came knocking.
Acker tells Urbo
that the architecture and history of the house drew him in: “It’s a
Queen Anne Victorian historic building, beautifully kept up. Inside it
has period pieces: chandeliers, most of all the original woodwork…all
extremely well [preserved].”
Acker
especially liked that the house had a “relaxed feel to it”—the
atmosphere acting as a nice counter-balance to his otherwise intense
daily work as an attorney.
Between
the hard work and money he had just put into the house and his
experience in commercial litigation, Acker was ready to make sure he
held onto his house, which he had named after his dog, Figo.
Acker
recalls very distinctly the meeting he had with the PR representative
who had come to “ease everyone out” of the neighborhood. The
representative made it clear to Acker, “in no uncertain terms,” that
TriMet would end up with his property. Acker says “I told her in no
uncertain terms I would be fighting. And she asked me what kind of law I
practice and I said, ‘If it’s necessary over the next few years it will
be eminent domain law.’ And I told her I wanted to thank her in advance
because if I prevail I planned to go after TriMet to recover my
attorney fees.”
A
motivated Acker began aggressively digging into the particulars of
TriMet’s plans and found some information that he deemed
“troubling”—confidential conversations between TriMet and nearby
Portland State University regarding the land acquisition and interest in
having the historic preservation society reclassify the Figo House,
thus making an eminent domain acquisition easier.
In
summation, Acker says, “There was a lot of underhanded stuff that was
going on and a lot that was being kept from the public.”
To
get neighbors and the public on his side, Acker put all the information
he had about TriMet’s questionable conversations into xeroxed packets
and handed them out at a public hearing. This began to turn the tide to
Acker’s favor. “The public was fantastic,” he says, and, “The media was
fantastic.”
He
was able to unearth more inconsistencies in TriMet’s plans for the
land: What was originally billed as a transit hub was actually going to
be a dorm for PSU, run by a private company. Eminent domain necessitates
that property seized has to go for public use, not private businesses.
Acker’s
tenacity paid off: Months later developer TriMet sent what Acker called
a “peace pipe letter.” Essentially the message was “You leave us alone,
we’ll leave you alone.” Though they scrapped their original plans for a
megastructure on the site, later TriMet crafted plans for a residence
hall that worked around Acker’s Figo House.
His
historical office space spared, Acker had no problem sticking it out
while construction raged on all around him. The construction company,
Walsh Construction, was “very easy to deal with,” says Acker. It was
certainly a sight to see, as this modern dorm tower rose around a tiny
Victorian home, but Walsh kept him apprised of what they would be doing
throughout.
Acker even enjoyed a bit of extra publicity by attaching a bevy of balloons to his house to in the spirit of the movie Up, with the construction foreman himself helping to attach the balloon bunch in Acker’s crawlspace.
Presently,
Acker is happy with how everything turned out, saying the new
development has “enhanced the area and made it more livable.” He wants
to be clear that he’s not in any way anti-development; he just wants to
ensure it’s done with care.
“I
think you need to account not just for future needs and development but
history,” states Acker, “This neighborhood has amazing history.” He
goes on to mention that many of Portland’s founders came from this area,
which was once predominantly Jewish and Italian. The Figo House has its
own fascinating history, at one time being a boarding house for single
women who didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Today,
the sight of Acker’s Figo House is a nice reminder that sometimes
history and progress don’t have to be mutually exclusive. As cities
continue to speed ahead into the 21st century, there can always be hope
for a symbiotic relationship between buildings that help a
neighborhood’s future and structures that remind residents of a
location’s past.
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