The Everwood Spite House is an unusual townhouse in Solaria-on-the-Lake, in New Equestria. It began construction in the early 3370s as a relatively ordinary upscale dwelling, to be occupied by Everwood Wand, who had recently retired from politics. However, one of Everwood's prospective neighbors, motivated by partisan political feeling, repeatedly stirred up legal mischief for Everwood. This litigation was expensive, and at one point required some expensive reworking of the structure so as to not block the view of the lake from the neighbor's parlor, giving the lower three storeys of the house its distinctive irregular pentagonal shape.
Unfortunately for the neighbor, Everwood found an obscure local law exempting wizard's towers constructed "for the use of an archmage" from many building code requirements and other local laws. Everwood promptly revised her housing plans again, to include a strangely-shaped and impractical "wizard's tower" conforming with the legal definition. The tower is only two meters in diameter in its higher levels, barely sufficient for its spiral staircase, and contains a single small room at the top wherein Everwood kept a (broken) crystal ball and some inexpensive alchemical reagents for legal reasons. The tower completely blocks the view of the lake from any of the neighboring house's windows. It is the shortest recognized archmage's tower on Equus, at five storeys.
Predictably, the tower's construction was also the subject of further litigation. Everwood prevailed in this case, though at considerable cost. An appeal was made to the Harmonic College of Archmagi, to revoke Everwood's status as an archmage in order to prevent the tower from being built, but the College declined, citing the indelible nature of the status of archmage, and instead advised the city to revise its laws to prevent a similar occurrence in the future, which was done.
Although strangely shaped and dominated architecturally by the "spite tower," and somewhat compromised by the mandated revisions, the house is livable. Over the centuries, it has become a local architectural icon. Everwood left the house to her cousin Mahogany Wand, and it passed down through several generations of that branch of the family. The current owners are the Bond family, who descend from Mahogany Wand. The Bonds raised their family there (including their son, Amide Bond, the husband of Dark Spark), but they do not live there now, instead occupying a smaller townhouse in New Canterlot. The Everwood Spite House is currently a popular bed-and-breakfast.
Besides the cost of the building and associated litigation pushing Everwood to the brink of insolvency, the controversy surrounding the house became something of an embarrassment to her in later years; the matter was repeatedly brought up by opponents to her appointment to the magico-legal system (as ensconced archmage of the Isle of Yore). Fortunately, she did not manifest similar behavior in the future, perhaps having grown wiser for the costly experience.