“The California Supreme Court does not want to hear about Steve Jobs’ quest to tear down a historic Woodside mansion. On April 25, the state’s high court turned down Jobs’ petition to hear his case,” Andrea Gemmet reports for Palo Alto Online.
“Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc., has been waging a losing battle against a group of preservationists over the fate of the Jackling house, a massive Spanish Colonial revival-style mansion built in 1926,” Gemmet reports.
“He said he plans to tear it down and build a new family home on the Mountain Home Road site, but has been thwarted by an ad-hoc preservation group called Uphold Our Heritage that filed suit to block the demolition,” Gemmet reports. “Jobs was granted a demolition permit by the town of Woodside in December 2004.”
Gemmet reports, “Jobs has said that he plans to build a much smaller family home on the site, and referred to the Jackling house, where he lived for 10 years, as an architectural ‘abomination.’ In recent years, the Jackling house has been uninhabited and allowed to fall into disrepair.”
“The demolition permit for the Jackling house came with an unusual condition — that Mr. Jobs offer to give away the mansion to someone who would relocate it and restore it. A handful of prospective takers have come forward, but the relocation plans have been on hold while the case made its way through the courts,” Gemmet reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bizarro Ballmer” for the heads up.]
Information about the Jackling house via the Uphold Our Heritage Web site: http://www.friendsofthejacklinghouse.org
Why doesnt steve just call up Ahnold! and ask for some iPod 4 house favors?
Steve should abandon the house. Then come the homeless and may be they will smoke crack there and accidentally set the house on fire! Problem solved!!!
Not to defend the preservationists, but to set perspective for those not of California. California originally belonged to Spain, so to disregard this fact is to disregard California’s heritage. As to 1926, since California didn’t become part of the USofA until 1850, 80 years is ancient history around here. Lastly, despite Jobs opinion that the house is an “abomination” (so why did he buy it in the first place?) a recently renovated example of the architect George Washington Smith in Montecito, California, has been offered for sale at $25,000,000. For more info on GWS:
http://www.architect.com/Publish/GWS.html
The issue here is that Steve values the property (the location, the fact that his kids carved their names in the apple tree in the back yard, whatever) more than the money he stands to make. Many of us do this – a somewhat (though not perfectly) comparable example is anyone who bought a black MacBook (same exact machine as the white one – 40GB larger HD doesn’t count, when you can buy a brand new HD the same size for less than the price diff). You’re basically paying $200 for black – doesn’t make sense to many people, does to you. Fine.
Anyway, for most people, $200 is a reasonable amount of money, but at the same time, plenty of us are willing to make that tradeoff. For a Steve Jobs, he’s willing to make the same tradeoff. Only, in his case, it’s not $200. It’s probably more in the $15 or 20 million dollar range.
As someone pointed out, buildings by this architect seem, anyway, to have a markup associated with them. That being said, strictly speaking, economics should ALWAYS ensure that property deemed of “value” (historic or otherwise) by society should be safe. Without having the dollars and cents figures in front of my, I’d bet that Steve could make more money either selling this place as is, or renovating it and selling it for top dollar, than he could by destroying it and building a new house in it’s place (and of course later selling that). Probably a bit more. But he values SOMETHING else (the view, the land itself, the memories on the land. Or, maybe thinking as I would in his shoes, sticking it to the douchebag neighbors) more than he does the cash involved.
Ultimately, it’s STEVE’S PROPERTY; as far as I’m concerned, he should be able to tear the damn thing down and build a giant skateboard park in it’s place if he wants. Or for that matter, an ipod factory (so long as whatever it’s used for doesn’t interfere in adjacent property owners’ use of their property).
me: “Spanish Revivalism. What a joke. How is Spanish Revivalism our heritage? We are not Spanish. So why should our homes look Spanish. I’ll bet the architect nor the owner were Spanish.”
Take a History class, dumbass…. It’s in California. California was part of spain right up until the US Seized it after the Spanish American War. Spanish colonial revival architecture happens to be all over the state, and is closely associated with Hollywood’s golden years in the 1920s and 1930s. I’ve never been to the Jackling House, but I have seen many photos of it before it went into Neglect, and while I greatly respect Mr. Jobs, I totally disagree with him on the house being abomination. it’s quite beautiful.
The house my wife and I live in, in the Hollywood Hills, is Spanish Colonial Revival, was also built in 1926 (as part of the Hollywoodland Development which was responsible for the creation of the Hollywood sign (which originally read “Hollywoodland”). We selected this house for it’s own beauty and the magnificent views of Los Angeles.
“Take a History class, dumbass…. It’s in California. California was part of spain right up until the US Seized it after the Spanish American War.”
That is absoFUCKINGlutely priceless. I laughed out loud.
Try the Mexican-American War.
jbobmurph : “Ultimately, it’s STEVE’S PROPERTY; as far as I’m concerned, he should be able to tear the damn thing down and build a giant skateboard park in it’s place if he wants. Or for that matter, an ipod factory (so long as whatever it’s used for doesn’t interfere in adjacent property owners’ use of their property).”
I suspect you would sing a different tune if someone wanted to build a factory next to your home! In your asinine universe, you can’t do a damn thing about that.
TowerTone: “Try the Mexican-American War.”
You are correct… I get them reversed all the time. Simple mistake, not so “absoFUCKINGlutely priceless” anymore, is it smart-ass?
Let me set you straight on something, Man. When you call someone a dumbass and tell them to take a history class, only to follow that with a mistake, is hilarious. It is called irony.
Here is something else that is ironic.
“so long as whatever it’s used for doesn’t interfere in adjacent property owners’ use of their property).”
I suspect you would sing a different tune if someone wanted to build a factory next to your home! In your asinine universe, you can’t do a damn thing about that.”
that ‘use’ would include as a homestead, and is why there are zoning laws.
Also, this ain’t my argument, but in the end, I believe Jobs will get his way, because he is right.
I am the blogger who has covered the Jobs-Jackling House story more intensively than any other. I’m pleased that Macdailynews is also covering it and linking to the Uphold Our Heritage site, which is the local historic preservation non-profit which has taken as its mission the preservation of Jackling House.
I want to make clear that the preservationists have always held out the Jobs the option of moving the house to an alternate site so that he could build whatever new house he wished on the site. However, in his infinite wisdom (& ego) he always held out for demolishing the home. His wishes conflicted with California law which provides for the preservation of historic buildings deemed of architectural significance.
Not only is this particular home magnificent, but the architect, G.W. Smith was the visionary behind the Spanish Revival style which continues to influence California architecture to this day. If you’ve ever been in the state and seen a home with an orange terra cota tile roof, it’s because of Smith’s influence. The reason Santa Barbara is one of the most beautiful cities in California is because Smith designed many of its most important civic buildings & essentially created the look of the place.
Those of you who favor tearing the home down should think about how Apple users might look on Apple products 100 years from now. Would you be pleased if no Apple user preserved the first Mac or Powerbook? If the only place you could see one was in a book about the history of computer technology? Because no one thought that preserving the machine as a historic artifact had any merit.
Think about it. I think people who use this argument are being terribly short sighted. What would Rome or Paris or London look like if the Steve Jobs of the world could buy anything, tear down everything & put up whatever they wished in its place?
Just my 2 cents. My latest post on Jobs legal loss before the Supreme Court is here:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2007/04/27/california-supreme-court-refuses-jobs-appeal-jackling-house-is-saved/
I think Stevo still has a few options to toy around with.
1.) Leave all the doors and windows open. Maybe enough wildlife will move in that it can be condemned.
2.) Build a water-tight, 60-foot tall wall around the entire house. Let the faucet drip.
3.) Start hosting regular meetings of the Pyros Anonymous. Keep a basketfull of Mac-themed zippos at the door.
4.) Install a very tall, gluttonously metallic radio tower right through the roof, preferably on the cusp of the stormy season. At the same time, hire the people who built the tower to immediately start work on re-staining the woodwork, keeping the materials at the foot of the tower.
5.) Get the house blown up by Uncle Sam: let the Army use the house as an urban warfare simulator.
@ben
oh man that was good.
seriously just move the house and everyones happy. as long as they dont whine their asses off at ‘where’ is a suitable location it should be no problem.
Another idea could be to rip the floor boards out and plant very fast growing trees in the middle of the house (close to the windows of course) and wait. If Steve did this 10 years ago he’d be sweet. (or he could just have a spanish looking house with trees growing from the roof) this might be harder to pass on. hmm.
@Damacles @ Jeff: “you win some, you loose some.” Actually, you win some, and you LOSE some.
Nononononono, you’ve all got it ALL WRONG. It’s “you LOOSEN SOME, and THEN, you tighten some.”
of course… not that that makes much sense in the context, but it’s not like we make sense all the time!
Mind if I follow you on Facebook?|