The Narrowest
House In America
Award-winning author Juliet Philip takes you there
T
he blue house at Old Town
Alexandria abounds with secrets.
At seven feet wide, thirty-six feet
tall and sandwiched between
one red and another white
house, the house is the narrowest
house in America and although cutesy, John
Hollensbury built the house out of spite.
As legend has it, Hollensbury’s backstreet
attracted horse-drawn wagons and other
passers-by. To keep the loiterers away,
Hollensbury enclosed the space and
constructed a play house for his daughters
Julia and Harriett. It was Hollensbury’s way of
saying, “Get off my property.”
One humid afternoon, after completing a
project at my first corporate job, I wanted to
go see the house.The blue house was the first
place I had wanted to visit after graduating
and landing my first job in America.
The blue house did not seem like a place
locals visited multiple times, or a place to brag
about in retrospect, or to post on Facebook
and roll up a small fortune of “Likes.” The
little blue house seemed a to-do but not an
iconic hyped about must-see on travel bustle
channels.
Old Town Alexandria is about ten miles
away from where I worked. I had two options
of commute: a bus to the metro station,
and from the station another bus to my
destination or I could drive. I chose to drive.
At Old Town Alexandria, I could do a twohour free street parking or pay a $5 fee per
hour for another spot. I saw an empty parking
space on Pendleton Street and took it.
I walked to the end of Pendleton St and
before I made a left on N Washington St, as
if somebody took a wet sponge and squeezed
it right above my head. It had started, out of
nowhere, to pour. I felt a pang of regret for not
checking the weather earlier. I saw a sheltered
bus stop, ran toward it and sat on a bench.
The weather app on my phone with fifty
percent certainty said it would stop raining in
half hour, so I waited.While I did, I watched
my smart phone die. Beside me, an elderly
32 Travel Secrets September-October 2015