Plum Island’s Pink House Inspires a Real Estate Fantasy

Several years ago, I called a real estate agent in my hometown, Newburyport, Mass., with (as one tends to bring to agents) a fantasy. I wanted to buy the Pink House.

I had first glimpsed this house as a child, from the back seat of the family station wagon en route to the beach. The foursquare single-family home sat alone on the road out to Plum Island, overlooking a vast flat landscape of pristine salt marsh. The sight unnerved me and became a mainstay of my nightmares: A lonely, unloved thing looming against a howling sky, its cupola a leering, all-seeing eye.

Over time, my unease had mellowed to familiarity, then affection, which deepened upon hearing its rumored back story: In 1925, a wife agreed to divorce her husband on the condition he build her an exact duplicate of the home they shared in town.

Because she didn’t specify where the house should go, he built it where it would cause her the most unhappiness: by itself, far from everything, no fresh running water (only salt). There’s a term for this: “spite house.”

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