14 DAY TRIAL // A stubborn old lady from Seattle, Washington, has become some sort of folk hero after she refused an offer of $1 million (€726,100) from developers who wanted to buy her house and level it off to make way for a shopping complex.
Edith Macefield achieved worldwide notoriety in 2006 when she turned down the impressive offer that would have certainly convinced anyone else.
Developers were planning to build a shopping mall there, and her house in the old fishing village of Ballard would have been replaced by a boutique supermarket and a health club.
“I don't want to move. I don't need the money. Money doesn't mean anything,” she said at the time.
So when the time came to build the five-story mall, developers were forced to build around her tiny 108-year-old house. And if her small farmhouse looks familiar to you, it's because in 2009 it became inspiration for the Pixar movie “Up,” which gained an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
Even after the construction work began, the woman continued living in her little old house until her death in 2008. When the noise was disturbing her, Macefield simply turned up the television or her favorite opera music a little louder. “I went through World War II, the noise doesn't bother me,” she said.
Many Ballard residents considered Macefield's decision noble because she was standing up to development, but the woman herself confessed that she was not trying to resist innovation nor make a statement by refusing the generous offer. She simply didn't want to relocate.
“I don’t have any family and this is my home. My mother died here, on this very couch. I came back to America from England to take care of her. She made me promise I would let her die at home and not in some facility, and I kept that promise. And this is where I want to die. Right in my own home. On this couch,” the woman said, according to Opposing Views.
When she died of pancreatic cancer, it was revealed that Macefield willed her house to the chief developer on the mall project, Barry Martin, with whom she formed an unlikely friendship. The woman did it in gratitude for the kindness he had shown her during the construction.
The home has then been sold to Greg Pinneo, director of a real estate coaching firm, for $310,000 (€22,520) and will be kept as a landmark despite having renovations done. Its walls were fixed and the windows were replaced.