The interior of Keret House in Warsaw, the world's narrowest building
photography by: Adrian Grycuk/ Wikimedia Commons
Perhaps humanity’s most basic need after food and water, shelter doesn’t only provide us with a safe and insulated living environment, but also defines us as a civilizational species. As the global population of urban areas soars, people are forced to live in an ever-shrinking space. In fact, some cases have gone so far that entire buildings were narrowed to less than 2 meters, putting to the test the physical threshold for humans to live in.
By: Richard Halsey
Date: 21:46 22.02.22
Last Update: 20:14 09.01.25
Throughout its history, Amsterdam has always been home to some of the world’s narrowest buildings. This anomaly is largely due to the local taxation system, which charged house owners according to the extent of their frontage. As a result, the width of buildings across the Dutch metropolis shrank dramatically, evolving into the iconic cityscape of spout façades we all know today.
Amid the reasonably narrow edifices are some particularly extreme instances where buildings are barely four times wider than an average human. While various sources all over the internet and beyond zealously claim that the city’s narrowest building is the Kleinste Huis at Oude Hoogstraat 22, it’s actually 22 centimeters wider than Generaal Vetterstraat 18b.
Wedged between a pair of unassuming buildings, the 1.80-meter-wide house in Amsterdam’s southern district was built in 1922, and its proportions are the result of necessity rather than the aforementioned municipal regulation. With a total surface area of a meager 20 m², its overall living space stands at around 37 m² – still enough for a claustrophobia-inducing living room.
Generaal Vetterstraat 18b, the greyish house between the two brick buildings
photography by: Ceescamel/ Wikimedia Commons
It is plausible to assume that the unsuspecting passersby who walk along the Hendel Building, locally known as the Skinny Building, almost certainly confuse it as a seamless part of its adjacent neighbor. Nevertheless, this slender box is a building in its own right. This rare oddity originated in 1903, when the municipality of Pittsburgh expropriated a strip of land along what was then Diamond Street to expand it into today’s Forbes Avenue. As a result, a series of buildings on the street’s northern side were demolished, while their remaining parcels were merged with their neighboring counterparts.
The only exception was a 6-foot wide and 80-foot long (1.8 meters × 24 meters) plot of land at the intersection of Wood Street. The unusual parcel was purchased by Andrew Mellon, who sold it in 1918 to Louis Hendel, a local hawker who opened an outdoor fruit market at the site. Due to multiple complaints of encroachment by his vendors onto the surrounding sidewalk, Hendel ultimately replaced the open-air marketplace with a 3-story building in 1926.
Encompassing most of the parcel, the 1.57-meter-wide building (5 feet and 2 inches) is often referred to as the narrowest commercial building in the world, although this claim is challenged by the Sam Kee Building in Vancouver, whose ground floor is 1.50 meters wide.
Interestingly, the building had many occupants throughout its history, including a fruit store, a cigar shop, a successful diner, and most notably, the Lincoln Restaurant (1928-1931), which was the only dining establishment in downtown Pittsburgh to serve African-American clients at that time. In recent decades, the oddly shaped building managed to dodge demolition after a group of activists opened an art gallery on the upper floors and is now officially listed as a historically significant site.
The Skinny Building in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
photography by: Cbaile19/ Wikimedia Commons
As its name implies, La Casa Estrecha (“the narrow house” in Spanish) is ridiculously slender, even more so when taking into account its two much larger neighboring buildings. Nestled along C. de Tetuán Street in San Juan’s old town, the mini edifice was, until a few decades ago, a shabby alley that led into an inner courtyard. The alleyway was eventually transformed into a small house, which, during the 2000s, was redesigned by its owner and architect, Antonio Álvarez.
The once basic hovel was turned into a fully functioning house complemented by an art gallery, measuring in total a meager 5 feet, or 1.52 meters. With a strikingly yellow façade and a dark-green door, this thin building had to overcome many structural challenges. For instance, its staircase has alternate steps to bridge the vertical gap between the floors, while water from the shower, sink, and toilet is all drained into a single area.
You might be glad to know that what La Casa Estrecha lacks in width, it definitely makes up for in its insanely expansive view from the balcony on the second floor, from where one can glimpse as far as Cerro Punta, Puerto Rico’s tallest mountain.
La Casa Estrecha (in yellow), wedged between two larger buildings
photography by: prayitno3063/ Flickr
The largest settlement across the Isle of Cumbrae’s bucolic landscape, Millport is known for its laid-back vibes, nearby sandy beaches, and, as it turns out, also as the home to the former holder of the “World’s narrowest building” title. Built in 1875 along Millport’s iconic seafront, the Wedge owes its name to the odd shape of the building that widens the deeper it gets, somewhat resembling a wedge of cheese.
While its frontage measures merely 47 inches, or 1.19 meters, the Wedge’s widest part is 11 feet wide (3.35 meters), making it spacious enough for its own living room and kitchen on the ground floor, as well as an upstairs bedroom with a shower and toilet. The house had dozens of tenants throughout its existence, including two families with children who lived in the premises simultaneously. Its current owner, 76-year-old Frances Melling, had to temporarily dismantle the building’s doorway so her precious furniture could make its way inside.
The exceedingly narrow "Wedge" in Millport, Scotland
photography by: Finlay Fraser/ geograph.org.uk
While each and every house on this list is ridiculously thin, all of them are far eclipsed by the following sardine box in the Polish capital. Measuring a measly 72 centimeters at its narrowest point and 1.22 meters at its widest point, the Keret House in Warsaw is officially recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s narrowest building.
Designed by local architect Jakub Szczęsny, the house was built in 2012 to accommodate novelists and authors who visit Warsaw. In fact, the building is named after its first guest, the Israeli writer Etgar Keret, whose parents were Holocaust survivors who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, a short distance away.
Sandwiched between 74 Żelazna Street and 22 Chłodna Street, a pair of buildings from two different eras, the Keret House has a total floor area of only 4.27 square meters. Despite its mind-bogglingly tiny space, this 3-story building is bestowed with multiple amenities, including a small kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a refrigerator with enough room for only two beverages. With only two windows, the inner space is lit primarily by the translucent façade, made of semi-transparent glass panels.
Moving vertically across the house is possible thanks to a retractable staircase, which, upon closing, becomes a modest living space, and a ladder linking the second and third floors. Hilariously, since the edifice doesn’t meet Warsaw’s minimal criteria for planning, it doesn’t qualify as a building and is instead officially listed as an art installation, while in practice, it serves as a residence.
Etgar Keret, the house's first resident, straddles its limited width
photography by: Forgemind ArchiMedia/ Flickr
