A hydrogen atom sandwiched by cyclopropanes

2′,3′,4′,5′,6′,7′-Hexahydrodispiro[cyclopropane-1,1′-anthracene-8′,1″-cyclopropane] (1) was prepared by double olefination (Wittig) and double methylenation (Furukawa) of 1,8-dioxo-1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8-octahydroanthracene (4) that was in turn prepared in two steps from 1,3-dibromobenzene. The X-ray structure of 1 shows that the C–9-H of its anthracene core is located 2.6 Å from the centroids of each of the flanking cyclopropane rings. The 1H NMR spectrum of 1 shows that the C–9-H resonance (δ 5.95) falls 0.84 ppm upfield from the C–10-H resonance (δ 6.79).