The tale of Steve Jobs, an old house and preservationists

(MarketWatch) -- This is a story that normally wouldn't get a lot of attention here, but this yarn involving a high-powered tech chieftain, a kowtowing Silicon Valley township, an old house and a clash of wills is worth telling.

The house is a 1920s-era mansion. On one side of the clash is a group of historical preservationists who want to keep the house for posterity. The chieftain? None other than Apple Inc.'s Steve Jobs.

More than four years ago, the town of Woodside -- a bucolic Silicon Valley enclave known to occasionally toady to the region's high-tech billionaires -- approved an application by the Apple co-founder and chief executive to tear down his Spanish Colonial Revival estate.

But the sprawling 1925 home remains standing today because a group of preservationists intervened, and after a lawsuit and appeal, Jobs lost.
Now, Jobs is trying again to demolish the estate, which he purchased in the early 1980s and lived in for about 10 years. Known to be obsessive about the design of Apple's products, Jobs wants to build a smaller, brand new single-family house on the site of the once-elegant estate. (No doubt one of those sleek numbers with clean white spaces and free of any buttons. Sort of like a giant iPod or Mac cube?)
A new application will be heard on Tuesday evening, in what may be a lively and contentious meeting. No decisions are expected Tuesday, but based on their past actions and some documents on their Web site, the town of Woodside seems all but ready to grant Jobs another demo permit.

"The question now is whether the evidence he is submitting will let them legally permit the demolition," said Brian Turner, an attorney for the western office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a non-profit created by Congress in 1949 to promote the public participation of the preservation of historic resources in the U.S.

(Full disclosure: I've watched this episode with interest because I'm a member of this preservation group and I've also written a book on San Francisco architecture.)
The house Jobs wants to destroy has been deemed historic for both its architectural style, as well as for its former tenant.

The 17,250-square-foot estate was designed by architect George Washington Smith, renowned among architectural historians as an early and notable purveyor of the Spanish Colonial Revival style in Southern California. The house, designed for copper magnate Daniel Jackling, is one of Smith's rare works in Northern California and is replete with unique copper fixtures, evocative of his client's occupation at the time.

Jobs has been making an effort to give his house away, a condition specified in the original 2004 demolition permit.

The Apple chief is required by the town to market the estate at his own expense. He then could donate the house to anyone who had the financial wherewithal to relocate and restore it, which has sat empty and unoccupied for more than a decade.
Jobs would donate a "reasonable amount, as determined by the town manager, to the cost of moving the massive house to a new location." It is not clear what Susan George, Woodside's town manager, has deemed "reasonable." George did not respond to a request for comment.

Howard Ellman, Jobs' attorney, said in a memo to the town of Woodside in September that after spending more than 100 hours to market the Jackling house, "there are no persons or entities of which we are aware seriously considering the possibility of moving and restoring the Jackling Estate." He added that two financially strong parties are still considering the matter but that they had yet to present any proposal in writing.

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