I remember when this was all happening with Edith. She was pretty much the only person in Ballard that didn't sell when offered.
She was literally the only person who didn't sell when offered, that's why the Ballard blocks is built around her house.
Holdout
21–30 of 64 posts
Re: Holdout
#22A more recent photo of Edith Macefield's house: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/18uugtoshe2... Nice balloons. Won't quite lift the house up though.
Sadly, it doesn't look that good anymore. It's all boarded up with a "coming soon" sign for something that's probably some sort of elaborate scam on it. Pretty sad, actually.
Re: Holdout
#23I think the house does a wonderful job of breaking up the monotony of the streetscape.
It used to break up the landscape, but in its current dilapidated state it's a bit of an eye-sore, even compared to the rest of the Ballard Blocks which are far from being architectural marvels. Hopefully someone will fix it up, because as it is, it is less a memoir of a woman with a strong will than a monument to the futility of resisting change.
It'd be a great little coffee shop.
Re: Holdout
#24Looks like this restaurant on the corner of the Ballard Blocks was also a "holdout"...
https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=47.662934,-122.375759&spn=0....
Re: Holdout
#25A flower shop that has long occupied a choice corner in my town recently made a unique deal with a developer wishing to build a large apartment building around it:
http://registerguard.com/rg/opinion/31978793-78/everything-c...
> Neal offered them a novel solution: He would design a building that included commercial space for a new Eugene’s Flower Home and give the family a deed for that portion of the building.
Re: Holdout
#26I've said it before, the 99percentinvisible podcast should be right up the alley of the hacker news crowd.
I discovered 99percentinvisible 2 days ago on Pocket Casts app on android, I was surprised to find this post right after I listened to this very episode. Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon at work!
Re: Holdout
#27Stories like this sometimes just break my heart. When you are at a certain age, money just doesn't matter any longer. Although the world can't just sit here and stop development and wait for people to move on. I am always so torn on how to feel about these types of situations.
I hope I never live up to that "certain age".
I mean, a lump sum of money, seriously exceeding a relocation cost, may have a lot of usages, from donating it to charity to traveling around the world to starting something new you wanted to do but did not have the resources.
Being locked in the amber of the memory of the days past and the ingrained routine may be a fine choice, but I hope to choose otherwise when the time comes.
Re: Holdout
#28A more recent photo of Edith Macefield's house: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/18uugtoshe2... Nice balloons. Won't quite lift the house up though.
The last photo in the article is much more recent than that. It's covered in plywood now :(
http://i0.wp.com/99percentinvisible.org/wp-content/uploads/2...
Re: Holdout
#29I had Tibor Gergley's "Great Big Book of bed time stories". There is a story in it called "Make way for the thruway" by Caroline Emerson. It is about an old lady who refuses to vacate her house so that they can make a highway. It has a happy ending when sympathetic construction workers build the road around her house, and she becomes the famous old lady with the pretty house next to the highway. My favorite quote: "Y…
There is a farm in the middle of the M62 over here, though contrary to popular tail it was left that way more for geographical reasons than because the owner of the land didn't want to sell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M62_motorway#Stott_Hall_Farm
Why the road splits to go around both sides instead of just one I'm not sure though.
Re: Holdout
#30I've said it before, the 99percentinvisible podcast should be right up the alley of the hacker news crowd.
I discovered 99percentinvisible 2 days ago on Pocket Casts app on android, I was surprised to find this post right after I listened to this very episode. Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon at work!
Man, I just learned about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon the other day, and now it seems to be popping up everywhere.