Skinny Houses (Classic)

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

This classic episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast explores three iconic skinny houses from around the world: the Long Beach Skinny House in

Key takeaways

• Skinny houses are not always spite houses; many are built out of necessity, love, or artistic vision.
• The Long Beach Skinny House was constructed from a surveying error and became a symbol of resourcefulness during the Great Depression.

Main topics

• Skinny houses
• Spite houses

Notable quotes

This thing is thin, only 10 feet wide, just enough room for a squished French door.

Conclusion

These three skinny houses—each born from different circumstances and m

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) When I first moved in with my wife, I discovered one of my favorite local oddities. It was just a 10-minute walk from our apartment in Long Beach, California, and it quickly became my go-to spot to bring out-of-town friends. Sure, you could come and crash on our couch, but you'd be going on this walk. I actually found it using the Atlas Obscura website. I was looking to connect with my new neighborhood by searching for interesting places near me. And I found a place really near me. It was the Long Beach Skinny House. This thing is thin, only 10 feet wide, just enough room for a squished French door. As I dug into this house's strange history, I found a number of other skinny houses all across the world. One phrase in particular kept popping up in my research. Spite houses. In fact, this very podcast has covered some skinny houses before in an episode titled Spite Houses. These are properties that are built out of malice to block views and crowd out neighbors. They have their own petty legends used to explain their strange shape. But here's the thing. Not all skinny houses are spite houses. Many are built for much more benevolent reasons. To make use of a scrap of land. To house a family. To be a piece of art. They are masterfully built. Labors of love. My name is Talon Stradley, and this is Atlas Obscura. A celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today, a story about three places. A skinny house along my infamous walk in Long Beach, a home in New York built from the scraps of the Great Depression, and finally, an imaginative structure in Warsaw, Poland. The tales of three buildings with tight floor plans and big hearts. More after this. Speaker 1 (2:25) Our first skinny house is in my hometown of Long Beach, California. My brother, Trent, and my mom, Carla, are in town, so I figured I'd finally take them on a journey to see our resident skinny house. Do you think we'll fit? We're not going into the skinny houses. We're just going to sit across the street and stare at the house. Oh, Speaker 2 (2:44) so we're skinny house stalkers. Speaker 1 (2:46) I prefer the term sightseers. The house is so thin that even if you know what you're looking for, it can be easy to miss. Speaker 2 (2:54) I just saw the skinny house behind the tree. I didn't know we were already at it. I didn't see it behind the tree. Speaker 1 (3:03) Squished between a single-family home and a restaurant on the corner, the skinny house is a three-story yellow stucco building with a small wall and gate that make up a miniature front patio. On the first floor are a smaller version of French doors with two thin windows next to them. An attic pokes out of the slanted roof on the third story. That's all you can see from the front of the house. But if you walk to the side, you'll catch a glimpse of the rooftop patio and an additional laundry room that finishes up on the third floor. Speaker 3 (3:33) Just because of its very symmetrical windows and its door, it looks like the childhood drawing of a house that you used to do, like every kid used to do. Speaker 1 (3:42) This is my wife, Rain. We visited the house together just a few days before I took the rest of my family. Speaker 3 (3:48) Here's the house's windows, and they look like eyes. And here's