Over the past fifty years, development in the United States has displaced millions of people, changed the shape of neighborhoods, and ultimately has altered the character of our nation. When her house was in a Seattle neighborhood that was planned for highrise construction, Edith Macefield refused to give in to developer’s demands and was ultimately able to keep her house from being victim to being plowed over for new development even after being offered over $1 million for her property. Unfortunately, Edith passed away two years after achieving her victory over her beloved home.

Several years later and the home is under threat once again in what look like could be for good. After failing to find a suitable buyer for the house, the current buyer is planning on either knocking down or donating the house to a suitable party. There had been several attempts to keep the house, including an organization that had plans to restore the property and a business that wished to open a pie shop in the house but both plans fell through and ultimately never came to fruition.

One of the most blatant answers would be to use the house as a residence but due to the current zoning of the area the house could not be used in such a manner.

The current owners are searching from a non-profit group that would be willing to possibly remove the home from the site and attempt to preserve it at another location. A deadline of July 29th has been set for proposals for nonprofit groups and then said groups have up to ninety days to have the house moved.

The house as it stands today.

The house derives its nickname as the “Up House” from the many similarities the home shares to the house from Disney’s Up. Both houses were in areas that were formerly primarily residential that developers eventually bought up and converted for commercial usage. In addition, both Edith and the main character Carl from Up had been living in their houses for the vast majority of their lives and refused to give into development demands. The biggest difference between Up and the real life story of Edith Macefield is that Edith actually somewhat won. She was able to keep living in her house up until her passing and the developers simply had to develop around her lot.

You could say the house stands as a testament to the effects modern development can have on our landscape and how much we are potentially at risk of loosing. I have nothing against new development but I think we all should seriously put thought into what we really want and at what cost we should seek it. We have to decide if new development is worth tearing apart pieces of our history and what some may consider their own little slice of bliss. Imagine the neighborhood that must have stood around Edith Macefield’s home and all of the beautiful homes that once lined this now highly developed urban street. Not to say that anything is wrong with new places to shop and dine, but we need to contemplate if new development is worth destroying neighborhoods.

I think the biggest take away from this story is Edith Macefield’s determination and spirit. In the face of an offer of $1 million, she stood her ground in order to be able to stay in the house that she had called home and if that is not something worth remembering, then I do not know what is.