Around 2005, a Seattle neighborhood called Ballard started to see unprecedented growth. Condominiums and apartment buildings were sprouting up all over the community which had once been mostly single family homes and small businesses. Around this time, developers offered a woman named Edith Macefield $750,000 dollars for her small house, which was appraised at around $120,000. They wanted to build a shopping mall on the block where Macefield had lived for the last 50 years.

Macefield turned down the money. Developers went forward with the shopping mall anyway. The mall enveloped her house on three sides.

Really cool episode of 99% Invisible—in a lot of ways, it felt reminiscent of the “smaller” shows that they started off doing. This video, about the tattoo that Roman Mars mentions, is also pretty great:

Joe Stracci