Edith Macefield

Common card · No. 330106

Edith Macefield (August 21, 1921 – June 15, 2008) was an American real estate holdout who received worldwide attention in 2006 when she turned down an offer of $1 million to sell her house to make way for a commercial development in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington (originally reported as a package worth $750,000). Instead, the five-story project was built surrounding her 108-year-old farmhouse, where she died at age 86 in 2008. In the process, she became something of a folk hero. After she died, Macefield willed her house to the new building's construction superintendent, Barry Martin, in gratitude for his friendship and caretaker role. Martin told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Two or three times she was basically going to sell and move, and then I know the last time she ended up falling and breaking some ribs, and that kind of took the gas out of her, and then it was just too much work."

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