A Solitary Stand at the Precipice

"He insisted that he was going to be the architect of record," Edenbaum said. "He was holding things up for a substantial amount of money and to be the architect of record. But he was basically against some very bright, sophisticated developers who essentially said, 'We'd love to do business with you, but we're not going to be held hostage.' "

Once the other landowners sold their lots to Trammell Crow and it became clear that profitable projects could be built around the Spriggs house, the value of his property began to wane.

"We still wanted to get him, but it wasn't necessary anymore," Murphy said. "I remember the last time I talked to him. I told him we were going ahead with the project without him, and he mumbled something about how I should talk to his lawyer. It was kind of sad. He left a lot of money on the table."

"The danger, when you're a spike holding out for the last dollar, is that you ask for one dollar too much," said Phillip Appelbaum, manager of litigation and appeals at the District's Office of Tax and Revenue.

Trammell Crow sold the lots it had assembled to two companies. Penzance Cos. plans a sleek 12-story office building made from concrete and glass. Broadway Management is building the plush Dumont Condominiums, two buildings with units selling for as much as $1 million. Plans call for the office building and the condominium to wrap around the Spriggs house on three sides and tower above it.

Securing the Spriggs house during construction has added about $600,000 in costs, which is split between Penzance and Broadway. The house is monitored five days a week to make sure it isn't moving, said Doug Lewis of Davis Construction. The work, which started in December, is scheduled to be finished next year.

Penzance and Broadway also offered to buy the Spriggs house. "We could never ascertain what was behind his lack of interest in entertaining what were serious offers," said Peter N. Greenwald of Penzance, which offered Spriggs what Greenwald called "a fair market price plus a little premium" in 2004.

A clue to the intentions of Austin Spriggs lies in a newly upgraded gas line to his 116-year-old house. Spriggs wants to open a Ledo Pizza franchise, according to the president of the Maryland-based pizza chain, James B. Beall.

Ledo expects to sign an agreement in the next weeks with Spriggs, who will substantially remodel the house, Beall said. The architect took out a $650,000 mortgage in January.

Plans call for the pizzas to start coming out of the oven in 2007 -- in time for the condominium dwellers and office workers who will be close enough to smell the food cooking.

"I don't care how much pizza he sells," Edenbaum said. "He'll never make what he could have if he sold his place."