Summary

The inspiration for Carl's house in Pixar's Up is a real-life person named Edith Macefield, who also refused to sell her lifelong home to construction workers.
Edith Macefield's house, known as Whitewood Cottage, is still standing today.
Plans for Macefield's house are uncertain, but there is hope that it will be preserved.

Pixar’s Up has a real-life backstory behind Carl’s house, and it is more heartbreaking than the movie. Up follows grumpy pensioner Carl Fredricksen who wants to move his beloved house to Paradise Falls, using balloons. After a career as a balloon salesman, and losing his beloved wife Ellie, Carl attaches thousands of balloons to his house to make it fly. He inadvertently picks up Wilderness Explorer Russell along the way. Carl’s house is a major emotional plot point of Up and is the reason behind a lot of Carl’s motives and decisions.

Carl’s initial decision to move his entire house to Paradise Falls comes after several offers from construction companies to buy it. Carl does not want to leave his house. After seeing his nice neighborhood turned into skyscrapers and construction sites, instead of selling and leaving, he simply decides to move the entire thing. Surprisingly, Carl’s house is based on a real-life person who also refused to sell their life-long home to construction workers. Although Up has one of the saddest montages in any of the 27 Pixar movies, the real-life story behind the house from Up is more heartbreaking.

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Up's Real-Life Story Explained

Edith Macefield Refused A $1 Million Offer For Her House

The real Up house, which is believed to be the inspiration behind the Pixar movie belonged to Edith Macefield and was called Whitewood Cottage. Macefield bought Whitewood Cottage for her mother in 1952 and lived with her there. The houses around Whitewood Cottage were bought by a stone company until only Macefield’s house remained. Her mother loved the house and refused to sell it. When Macefield’s mother died in 1976, it was assumed Macefield would return to England where she had lived with her first husband, but she decided to stay. In letters, Macefield writes (via The Seattle Times):

This old house wrapped its age-old structure around me and hung on.

Similarl to Carl’s story in Up, as Macefield became older and succumbed to illnesses, construction offers flew in but Macefield still rejected them all. Macefield turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars and even became famous for refusing a $1 million offer from a developer in 2006 (via Good Things Guy). Ironically, it was a construction superintendent who worked on the development surrounding Macefield’s house, named Barry Martin, who looked after Macefield when she became ill with pancreatic cancer, and Macefield ended up leaving everything to Martin when she died in 2008.

What Happened To Seattle's Real Up House

Macefield's House Is Still Standing, Surrounded By A Shopping Mall

After Macefield’s death, Barry Martin sold the house for $300,000 to a business developer as Macefield had requested, although he still has plenty of Macefield’s belongings and memories. Since the initial sale, the plans for Macefield’s house have been unclear. As of 2019, per Google Maps, Macefield’s house is still standing proudly surrounded by a shopping mall, albeit more dilapidated than when Macefield resided in it. The house is a beloved part of the community and people visit to tie balloons and ribbons to Whitewood Cottage, a nod to the balloons used to fly Carl’s house away in Up.

Behind the scenes, Kiro News Radio reported that Macefield’s house has changed ownership several times and that there were even talks of it being demolished at one point. However, Regency Centers bought Macefield’s house in 2018 and plans to preserve it, hoping to incorporate it into the surrounding mall. Regency Centers were hoping to get the community involved for suggestions and thought about making Macefield’s house a “community gathering space… pop-up retail… ice cream shop… exhibits for art.” Though the plans for Macefield’s house since this report are still uncertain, the real-life Up house could still be preserved.

Sources: The Seattle Times, Good Things Guy, Kiro News Radio