Everyone thinks Boston’s famed skinny house, sold for $1.25 million, was built out of spite — but that might be a century-old myth.

Boston legend has it that the skinny house at 44 Hull Street was built out of spite, but old photographs and maps say otherwise.

There’s a tiny sliver of a house on Boston’s Freedom Trail.

The 10-foot-wide home is sandwiched between the two regular-sized properties, with a narrow private alley separating it from the building next door.

Behind the slender facade of 44 Hull Street sits a modern home with two bedrooms and one bathroom over 1,000 square feet.

According to the Zillow listing the last time it was for sale, the ground level of the skinny house has a full-size kitchen, two bedrooms, a dining room, a living space, and a private garden.

The two upper floors contain several sitting areas, a guest bedroom, a bathroom, and a laundry room. It sold for $1.25 million in 2021.

There’s no shortage of unique homes in the US and abroad. But an urban legend that Boston’s skinny house was built out of spite — from a feud between two brothers — has made the property a viral phenomenon.

Still, the story about the skinny house’s spiteful origins may not be true.

One oft-repeated story says the skinny house was built out of spite by an angry brother in the 1800s.

A sign that says the home is a “spite house” hangs from the front facade.

A 2015 Boston magazine roundup of all of the “spite houses” in New England nicely summarized the most popular legend surrounding 44 Hull Street.

The land on which the skinny house now sits was inherited by two brothers, one of whom served in the Civil War.

After that brother returned from war, he discovered that his sibling had spent the time building a large house on most of the plot of land they were supposedly going to share.

Out of revenge — or spite — the brother who’d served in the war decided to build himself a skinny house around 1862 to block the sunlight that his brother’s property would get.

A slightly different version of that origin story dates back to a 1920 newspaper article.

In 1920, the Boston Globe published an article with a version of the skinny house’s origin story.

In 1920, the Boston Globe published one of the earliest articles referencing a “spite” myth associated with 44 Hull Street.

Its author, however, recounts a slightly different perception.

The article describes a tale that says the house was erected during a land dispute between warring neighbors — one of whom was supposedly a “Tory,” or someone who supported Great Britain.

Toward the end of the article, though, doubt is cast on the notion the house was built out of spite.

It refers to a map held by the Bostonian Society that showed the house was not built until after 1874, “giving the lie to the old legend.”

The land was empty until multiple properties were built there in the late 1800s, old maps show.

The house sold to its latest owner in 2021.

An 1852 map of Hull Street from the Boston Public Library appears to show that the plot of land where houses 44, 46, and 48 are located today was empty at that time.

By 1874, an updated street map indicates that four properties had popped up on the land owned by someone named Thomas Caswell.

One theory is that 46 Hull Street was split up into two structures in the late 19th century to create the skinny house.

Boston legend has it that the skinny house at 44 Hull Street was built out of spite, but old photographs and maps say otherwise.

A closer look at a neighborhood map from 1888 shared in the Harvard Library catalog appears to show that the owner of 46 Hull Street, the property to the right of the skinny house, split it in two sometime between 1875 and 1888.

In doing so, the dimensions of the property where 44 Hull Street stands today were created.

A photo taken of Hull Street in the late 1800s appears to support the theory, indicating the current facade of the skinny house was once part of a larger structure.

The facade of Hull Street in a photograph taken in the late 1800s, right, appears to directly contrast the “spite” myth. 

A photo taken around 1875, available through the Boston Public Library, provides a closer look at the architecture of the front-facing windows on Hull Street.

The siding and window overhangs in the photo appear to be identical to what’s on the skinny house today.

That is perhaps evidence that the house was not built separately from its surrounding structures but that the surrounding structures were also once made of wood and later converted into brick.

Many tourists who flock to 44 Hull Street hear the popular stories, centered on spite, from tour guides.

The funky-looking house was probably not built out of spite in 1862, contrary to its sign.

44 Hull Street remains a popular visitor destination, with multiple travel blogs and websites calling it a hidden gem to add to any tourist itinerary of Boston.

If people still believe that the slender home was built out of revenge, let them.

But while the “spite house” origin story is fun, it’s probably just an urban myth.