Every developer knows the rule: everyone has a price. In Seattle, they found the one person who didn’t.

Edith Macefield was 84 years old. She lived alone in a tiny house built in 1900, on a block in Ballard that developers wanted for a five-story shopping complex. The county valued her house at about eight thousand dollars. The developers offered her around a million.

She said no.

So the architects had to cut a hole in their own plans — exactly the size of her house — and build the entire complex around her. Concrete walls rose on three sides, just a few feet from her kitchen window. And then the developers sent a construction superintendent named Barry Martin to run the site. His job was to build those walls. Instead, he ended up cooking her meals, driving her to the doctor, and becoming the only person she let inside.

When Edith died, she left the house to him. Along with boxes of papers — and stories about her life that sounded almost impossible.

Then came the balloons, the “Up” house legend, an auction nobody bid on, and a fight over a little house that still hasn’t ended.

So why did she really say no? And who finally won?

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CHAPTERS

0:00 – Cold Open
1:03 – The Offer
3:15 – No
5:13 – A Million
8:21 – The Man Who Built the Walls
12:20 – The Real Reason
15:28 – Who Was Edith
20:07 – The House That Wouldn’t Go

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SOURCES & FURTHER READING

HistoryLink — Edith Macefield: https://www.historylink.org/file/11092
NPR (20.06.2008) — Remembering Edith Macefield: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/91748718
Seattle Times, Pacific NW Magazine (2015) — Searching for Edith Macefield: https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/searching-for-edith-macefield/
99% Invisible — Holdout: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/holdout/transcript/
KUOW (13.03.2015) — Auction of Edith Macefield’s house was mostly for show: https://archive.kuow.org/news/2015-03-13/auction-of-edith-macefields-ballard-house-was-mostly-for-show
Mental Floss — The final chapter of the so-called “Up” house: https://www.mentalfloss.com/entertainment/movies/final-chapter-so-called-house
My Ballard (18.04.2018) — No demolition permit issued: https://www.myballard.com/2018/04/18/with-rumors-flying-about-macefield-house-no-demolition-permit-issued-so-far/
King County Assessor — parcel 2768303225 (1438 NW 46th St): https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=2768303225

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