• News
  • Film and TV
  • Music
  • Tech
  • Features
  • Celebrity
  • Politics
  • Weird
  • Community
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • LADbible
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • UNILAD Tech
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
Threads
TikTok
YouTube
Submit Your Content
Elderly woman inspired movie Up after she turned down $1 million for house and forced developers to build around her

Home> Film & TV> News

Published 17:23 4 Oct 2023 GMT+1

Elderly woman inspired movie Up after she turned down $1 million for house and forced developers to build around her

Much like the Disney film, Edith Macefield refused to bow down to developers who had to eventually build a mall around her home.

Katherine Sidnell

Katherine Sidnell

Featured Image Credit: Fox

Topics: US News, Disney, Film and TV, Money

Katherine Sidnell
Katherine Sidnell

Katherine is an entertainment journalist with a love of all things nerdy. Starting out writing Doctor Who fan fiction as a kid, she has gone on to interview the likes of Matt Damon, James May and Dua Lipa to name a few. Published in The Sun, The Daily Mail and Evening Standard - she now joins Ladbible as resident nerd in chief.

X

@ksidnell

Advert

Advert

Advert

At some point in our lives, most of us would have wondered what it was like to live in a Disney film.

But it turns out that an 84-year-old woman was actually living the real-life version of Up... well, kind of.

Edith Macefield became a national hero in 2006 when she refused to sell her Seattle farmhouse despite developers making a huge offer. Take a look below:

The elderly Washington resident bought the home back in 1952 for just $3,750 and lived in the home with her mom Alice, according to the Seattle Times.

Despite the house being 108 years old, it wasn’t worth much and property developers were eager to purchase it and eventually bulldoze it, to make room for a new shopping mall.

Advert

Initially, they offered Macefield $750,000 and later upped the figure to $1 million.

Even with this life changing sum though, Macefield refused and builders simply had to work around her instead.

Barry Martin was the construction manager who worked on the development, but rather than seeing him as her bitter rival, Macefield ended up befriending him.

Macefield became a national hero for a her defiant act.
Fox

Advert

She initially asked him to drive her to a beauty appointment, later calling on him for favours like laundry, lifts to the doctors, making her meals and more.

The two became so close that Macefield ended up leaving the house to Martin when she died in 2008.

Sadly, Martin ended up having to sell the property when he found himself out of work during an economic ‘downturn’.

Speaking on Fox’s Strange Inheritance, he said Macefield had given him her blessing to sell before she passed away, explaining: “She told me to hold out until I got my price. I sold it for $310,000.”

Advert

He also revealed that his friend hadn’t actually been opposed to the shopping mall, but that she had just wanted to stay put.

The strange home can still be seen on Google Maps.
Google Maps

Martin said: “A lot of people thought she was against the development, but that wasn’t the case at all. It was more a case of she didn’t want to go through the exercise of having to move.”

While the home has widely been reported as the inspiration for Disney’s 2009 film Up - which follows elderly widower Carl Fredricksen who is reluctant to sell his house after developments spring up around it - production of the movie actually began in 2004, before Macefield even refused to sell.

Advert

However, Disney did choose to use the house to promote the flick, with Martin recalling: “They wanted to put balloons on the house for their premiere here in Seattle.

Disney even put some balloons on the house to celebrate the release of Up bac in 2009.
Fox

"So they came out and put balloons on the house and took a picture, and that’s how it became the Up house.”

He added: “After I saw the movie, there was actually some photographs that look very similar to the picture in the movie.”

Advert

As Strange Inheritance host Jamie Colby explained, eventually Edith’s cottage and that of character Carl Fredricksen became ‘associated as one’.

Amazingly, you can still find the house today - still surrounded by buildings - at 1438 NW 46th St.

Choose your content:

3 hours ago
9 hours ago
a day ago
  • Nanci Santos/Getty Images
    3 hours ago

    97% Prime Video series hailed by Stephen King gets brand new prequel

    The drama is moving to a new streaming service for its backstory

    Film & TV
  • Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen/YouTube
    9 hours ago

    Jennifer Lopez gives surprising answer when asked who her best on-screen kiss was

    The kiss in question is from one of J-Lo's more recent projects

    Film & TV
  • Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
    9 hours ago

    Fans are just learning what Adam Sandler's highest grossing movies are and they're completely stunned

    Sandler has been in films for over thirty years

    Film & TV
  • Netflix
    a day ago

    ‘Gripping’ Netflix mini-series dubbed ‘better Game of Thrones’ as it climbs TV charts

    Its cast features a former Emily in Paris star

    Film & TV
  • Matthew McConaughey explains why he turned down $15M movie role
  • Plans are revealed as family give in to pressure to sell $11,000,000 house after developers built a neighborhood around them
  • Wild true story behind new Channing Tatum movie 'Roofman' and prisoner who hid in Toys 'R' Us for months
  • Harry Styles shares the one key reason he turned down movie role opposite Emilia Clarke