Compromise reached over Jobs' mansion

It appears Steve Jobs is poised to get his way over the house he has been trying to tear down.

The 1925 mansion located in Woodside, Calif., has sat in disrepair for years, and the Apple CEO has tried to get permission to knock down the structure and build a new home. Though historic preservationists have been outspoken about the plan to destroy the 14-bedroom home, the Woodside Town Council voted last month to allow Jobs to apply for a demolition permit.

Steve Jobs' 1925 mansion in Woodside, Calif.

(Credit: Jennifer Guevin/CNET (Created with Microsoft Virtual Earth))

The latest reports reveal that a compromise has been struck. An investor from Palo Alto, Calif., Gordon Smythe, has offered to take the structure off Jobs' hands, and off the property. Smythe plans to disassemble and move the house to a new location. As part of the deal, Jobs would pay $600,000 for photographing, disassembling, and reconstructing the building elsewhere. The pact needs the permission of the Woodside Town Council, and will be discussed at a meeting Tuesday.

For his part, Smythe wants the house because he's a fan of George Washington Smith, the man who built it. Smythe has five years to find a new plot on which to reassemble the mansion. If he can't locate one, Woodside has first claim to some of the historic pieces of the house, which is reported to include things like the tiling and pipe organ.

This story was corrected at 3:45 p.m. PDT to correct the date when the mansion was built.

[dantheman962]

"It's an iHouse"<br />"But there's no windows"<br />"Exactly...ha ha ha"

[rapier1]

I hate to be the one to ask this question but I fear I must.<br /><br />Who the hell cares?!

[jaguar717]

Well, I'm no Jobs fanboy, but I kind of care that we've reached a point where you have to beg government permission to tear down what's supposed to be your house on what's supposed to be your land.<br /><br />When some third party group with no claims whatsoever steps in and calls for Fedzilla to dictate what you can do with your property, whether it's in the interest of "preservation" or anything else, what possible other name for it is there but fascism?

[Thranx]

I concur. You own the land, you set the terms. <br /> <br />Doze it.

[nicmart]

I third it. It illustrates the dismal condition of freedom in America.

[8301]

Hate to be the fascist here, but with your logic, I suppose you guys wouldn't mind if Wal-Mart tore down a few historic structures to put up some more cinder blocks and asphalt?<br /><br />The house isn't especially historic or unique, but when you say that people should be able to do anything they want with their land you set a very dangerous (and vague) rule. Your neighbors own their land too, but I bet you can think of a million things you don't want them to build on their property.

[ikramerica--2008]

It can be taken too far. What constitutes historic? Because some moderately important architect built a house for a rich person 80 years ago, it's a landmark? I went to architecture school, we had lots of courses in history and preservation, and I never did hear of this famous guy.<br /><br />If anything, the preservation of artifacts or even a room in a museum would be good enough. Otherwise, what value to society is there of preserving a private mansion that nobody will get to see or visit?

[jaguar717]

What "very dangerous rule" does it set? Rule of law? Actual property rights where the individual can't be sacrificed to a majority gang?<br /><br />Your example is what's vague. Wal-Mart can't just go around tearing down "historic" buildings. If they own the building, then of course it should be able to. If you find value in something, you're free to buy it and they should have the same say in what you do with it: none. I suspect you kept it vague because you were talking about dictating to Wal-Mart what you'd like them to do with their property...<br /><br />And "doing whatever you want" is in the same context of anything else. You're free to do what you wish, so long as you don't infringe others' rights. So running a sludge factory out of my house would infringe your rights if you had filth and stench filling your kitchen. Tearing down my house to update it doesn't infringe your rights, because you have no "right" to my property.

[8301]

@ikramerica--2008 <br /> <br />I don't know how important the house is, historically, culturally, or otherwise. But apparently someone finds value in preserving it. Whether or not they are justified is another matter, but I don't think it would kill anyone to take some time out to consider how important the house is (or may be in the future) before it is gone for good. There could be many houses like this one at the moment, but that may not always be the case, particularly if everyone employs the same attitude with regards to demolishing them as this specific example. <br /> <br />@jaguar717 <br /> <br />Let's say Wal-Mart, while excavating for a store, unearths an ancient Native American settlement. It has well-preserved remains of most facets of their culture, a find on the scale of Pompeii. But since the property is owned by Wal-Mart, there's no reason they can't bury it under dozens of racks of discout goods, right? <br /> <br />Or let's say someone does build a sludge factory, or a paper mill, or a skyscraper or a radio tower next door to your house. Maybe they don't disturb your property, or fill it with sludge/paper byproducts. Of course, now you're living on land worth a fraction of what it was before, next to an abortion of zoning laws, but it's their property, so they should be able to do what they want with it. <br /> <br />Now do I think everyone should have to face a tribunal every time they paint their house or put up a gazebo? Not really. But there is a finite amount of land, that was here long before anyone had the capacity to buy it, and once it's cleared and developed, it's very difficult to restore to its previous state. So I would think a little more strategy/coordination regarding land use would be in order besides the blanket assumption that the owner knows best.

[Nocturnex]

a bunch of whiny hills type idiots thinking that they are doing something right....<br /><br /><br />and apparently the media and some fans and there infatuation with everything about a peanut headed guy with a black turtleneck..

[lisasepiphany]

I can't see how Mr. Jobs can consider himself to be an enthusiastic manufacturer of products supporting "green" philosophies, as he has in the past, and in good conscience, not preserve a structure benefiting such an environment, especially in the community in which he lives. I'm disheartened, to say the least.

[c4s2k3]

Maybe you can enlighten us about just how preserving a big-a$$, fugly house built in 1935 benefits the environment. From what I read, Jobs, wants to build a smaller structure anyway. I'm willing to bet almost ANY house built today in its place would be more energy efficient than that monstrosity.

[badasscat]

It is his house. I am no Jobs RDF sufferer but as a homeowner, I think what he is doing in allowing someone to cart the thing away is above and beyond what should be required of him.<br /><br />Houses get torn down all the time, and you don't know what condition this place is really in. From the interior photos I've seen, it is at least not great. Anyway, it doesn't really matter - it's his land and his house and he's not proposing to build a 70 story skyscraper that blots out the sun for all his neighbors, or anything, he just wants to build another house there. And I've never seen a suggestion that he was going to tear this house down in some particularly environmentally unfriendly way - most wood and other materials are recycled when demolition is done (because there's money in it for whoever's doing the demo).<br /><br />There's always a balancing act when you're talking about building a new house in an existing neighborhood, and I'm not saying he should be allowed to build whatever he wants there up to and including a full-scale replica of the Pentagon. But when you buy a house and land, and you *own* it, you do generally have the right to tear it down and put something else there, and it's really not up to outsiders to judge that.

[myles taylor]

How is the structure benefiting the environment? By supplying a home for rats and owls? Please enlighten us. How will a smaller house hurt the environment?

[esteven4]

I think if I were him, I'd just sell the property and find a new place. I don't know how long this process has been going on, but he could very well be waiting five years now for the house to be moved (plus spend over half a million dollars to get rid of it, when the demolition would cost a fraction of that), plus pay and wait for the new house to be built in its place.<br /><br />It must be an awful nice plot of land.

[cvaldes1831]

It's not an ordinary piece of property. It's Woodside, California, one of the most prestigious ZIP codes in America.<br /><br />The Jackling House sits on a six-acre lot at the end of a one-way street; Jobs also owns an adjacent three-acre lot. Nine acres of contiguous land in Woodside is crazy expensive and almost unheard of.<br /><br />There's another house on the same street for sale (it's not in a cul-de-sac): 3 acres, $29.5 million.<br /><br />So conceivably, Jobs' combined acreage could be worth $100 million. And since he bought the Jackling House in 1984, he's probably paying what basically amounts to pennies in property taxes (thank you Prop 13). Prop 13 sets the tax at 1% of the actual value and limits increases of the assessed value by a maximum of 2 percent per year.<br /><br />Let's just say for argument's sake that he bought the Jackling House at $10 million in 1984. The property tax would have been set at $100,000 and after 25 years of 2% increases, he would be paying around $164,000 today. If he sold the property at $100 million and found an identically priced property, his property tax bill would instantly balloon to $1 million.

[cvaldes1831]

Of course, that's an overly simplified scenario, but that's basically what's at play.<br /><br />The property is so incredibly valuable and his taxes are so (relatively) cheap, Steve would be crazy to sell the land and buy something else in the neighborhood.

[epross]

nothing a careless cigarette butt could have accomplished years ago.

[ikramerica--2008]

This is how many, many, many historic buildings are knocked down. Towns get overzealous about these things and then "mysterious fires" pave the way for new buildings.

[pcdude2143]

He should just knock the thing over. He's got enough money to fight it (which also means that no one will attempt to fight him). I disagree with the government restricting people's freedom in this way. It's his land and his house, so why CAN'T he do what he wants?

[badasscat]

I know what I said earlier, but just to play a little devil's advocate now (because I did say there should be *some* restrictions) - every municipality has laws regarding what you can and can't build. And the thing is, those laws were there before he bought this land, and he didn't need to buy the land if he didn't want to follow those laws. This is true everywhere, not just where he lives. You can't buy a plot of land in a residential suburb and build the tallest office building in the world there, because it would obviously not be good for the community as a whole - there wouldn't be enough roads to handle the traffic, not enough parking, property values (and therefore tax dollars) would drop, etc. (A lot of municipalities have laws against painting your house garish colors for the same reason. You don't need to move there if you don't like it.)<br /><br />So this is nothing new or unexpected, to him or any other homeowner.<br /><br />However, there needs to be some common sense with regard to these laws and regulations, and the enforcement of them. The point of these laws is to preserve the character of neighborhoods and therefore ultimately protect the tax base. I don't see that anything he is proposing is going to affect that. He wants to replace an old, run-down house with a new, smaller yet tastefully-designed house (I've seen the plans). And you can't even see it from the street, from what I remember. So, while some people may think it's a shame to tear down a "historic" house (frankly, my house is older than this one), it's really not their business in this particular case.<br /><br />But not every case is the same.

[jonathan0766]

Who decides the definition of a neighborhood's character exactly? It's a subjective definition that changes from person or group to another; depending on the person or group that is making up fantasy definitions of "neighborhood character." Even the very act of stating a definition for a neighborhood's character by nature alters the neighborhood's character; every single thing done, by premise, alters a neighborhood's character. So where is the line drawn? It's drawn by arbitrary dictate, by a bunch of Gestapo wannabes.<br /><br />So long as you have a person or a panel of people dictating arbitrary, sometimes insane, rules and regulations on what someone can do with their own property (assuming it's harming nobody else), then it's fascism, plain and simple. Arbitrary control of property is a necessary requirement for fascism; the only NeXT Step beyond that level of fascism is ownership of property becoming ownership of persons (see: mussolini, fascism circa 1935).

[ikramerica--2008]

Usually, a group of people decide to freeze time, and decide that "now is how it should be" and that's that. It's pretty much the same with environmentalism. The temperature it is NOW (or in our lifetimes), the rainfall we get NOW, the species that exist now, etc., are the "right" way things are supposed to be, and any change is wrong and must be the fault of man and must be stopped.<br /><br />But the world moves on, things change. Even architectural masterpieces are the result of destroying old things to make way for new. Paris was designed by tearing down whole neighborhoods in order to create the hub/spoke layout. Gothic cathedrals were sometimes built on the foundation of raised churches or even modified from the Romanesque, and New York's Central Park was once neighborhoods and farms, and what if at the time those who were opposed to relocating those people had one (there is ALWAYS opposition, and was 150 years ago). An urban oasis masterpiece would not exist.

[myles taylor]

It's ridiculous. We Americans name buildings only a few hundred years old as "historic" when on a historical scale they are infants. To top it off, we go way overboard and hang onto every nostalgic little bit from our past, refusing to just let things go and we end up with and overload of "historical" preserves. What happens if we keep this up? <br /><br />Let him tear down the house! It's not even a century old! It's not historic in any sense of the word. I know people who are older than that house.

[cvaldes1831]

You're wrong. Historic value isn't solely governed by age.<br /><br />In this case, the historic value is largely due to the fact that it is one of the few remaining examples of a particularly architectural movement (Spanish Colonial Revival). It has rarity going for it. If the SF Peninsula was littered with houses of this style, no, it would not have much historic value.<br /><br />Other historic places are designated because of something that happened (e.g., the garage that was the birthplace of Hewlett-Packard). The Jackling House is not deemed historic for anything that happened there, it's just a designation of the rarity of the architecture.

[ikramerica--2008]

Yeah, but it's really a stretch. There are spanish colonial revival houses all over California and the USA, just maybe not this large and not in Woodside. I mean, I live in Pasadena, and around here, Glendale, Burbank, etc., we have TONS of this type of house along with the Craftsman and Arts and Crafts styles, just smaller houses mostly. The bigger examples are in disrepair like Jobs' place because the cost to preserve them is so high. Just on my street there are 3 larger "historic" homes in need of major repair, while the smaller ones are well preserved.<br /><br />So do we preserve haunted mansions because they are large? Who pays for that? How many of these structures do we need before we decide there are enough of them? Why not simply remove the vintage pieces and relocate them to suitable locations? The woodwork would be useful to preserve a few smaller homes, for example, and the organ could be reconditioned by a church. But how practical is it to keep it in this private home in exclusive woodside where noone is going to see it?

[cvaldes1831]

In this case, it is a stretch. I think the house is ugly. There are some nice elements worth saving, but the house simply isn't worth preserving in its entirety. There has been too many poor additions and renovations that have damaged whatever better aesthetic it had when it was was originally built. It was okay, but it's not the Robie House by Frank Lloyd Wright.<br /><br />Sure, run a photographer through the place, grab the nicest elements, then bulldoze the house. <br /><br />Some art lovers blindly follow the tenet "it is authentic, therefore it is beautiful" and don't really see a mediocre piece for what it really is. It think that's what's happened here.

[Jimmy371]

This sucks. If preservationists want it, let them pay for the house. Otherwise, shut up and get out of the way!

[ddejulien]

I am in process of establishing a non profit petting zoo for children in Vista, CA, called the Birthday Barn; it would be a place where children can celebrate their birthdays. All things ecological, historical and educational will be ongoing here. We'd be interested in the building, if Mr. Jobs is at all interested in helping us to move it to the site. We would be grateful for any assistance in our start up, and we would like to see the building preserved. There may be extenuating circumstances concerning the architect, which may have caused some in the field to have no knowledge of him. He may be a minor character deserving of only a room in a museum somewhere, but people have been wrong before. Preserve first, as something can always be demolished later, if historical and artistic relevance proves to be unwarranted.<br /><br />I would like to hear from Mr. Jobs or his representative, as I am a private party, disinterested in personal gain, and not looking to strip the building of any artifacts, but rather leave it intact, as it was intended. The sum is greater than its parts, when it comes to historicity.<br /><br />Thank you for your consideration,<br />Donna de Julien<br />[e-mail]