Edith Macefield

Who was Edith Macefield?

Edith Macefield achieved worldwide notoriety in 2006 when she turned down US$1 million to sell her home to make way for a commercial development in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. In the process, she became something of a folk hero. Instead, the five-story project was built surrounding her 108-year-old farmhouse, where she died at age 86.

After her death it was revealed that Macefield willed her house to the new building's construction superintendent, Barry Martin, in gratitude for the friendship he had shown her during the construction. 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."