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you win some, you loose some

If the State or a private interest group wants to preserve the home, they should buy it themselves. It's always very easy to be idealistic when someone else is paying the price for that idealism.

Termites. That is what you need... good old termites.

Just buy a bunch of chairs, invite Ballmer over for dinner and share future plans. Ballmer will toss the chairs around and likely tear the place down.

just burn the bloody thing down. simple. woops i dropped a match on some petrol rags that were lying around, sorry about that.

"Got a match?"

"Yeah, yer butt and my face....er, wait.."

How about he restores it and turns it into a revenue-producing Museum of Inovation that includes every Apple product ever released, and finds himself a secluded place free of the publicity and traffic this location already has

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.

It's an abomination. What integrity does a house designed in a fake Spanish style in the US have? It's just a big house built by a really wealthy man in a really wealthy neighborhood.

This is what heritage means for Americans.

Better yet assasinate the people responsible for holding this up.I can totally picture the people that want to keep the house around. Theyre the kind of people that do nothing more than sit around and discuss world politics, interspersed with cognac and moaning about the state of their dafodils.

Its just an ego trip for these idiots, stopping someone like Jobs from doing what he likes with his own property.

G.W.
I think many of us would like for you to expand on that delightful insight.

There is a depth of knowledge, I am sure, that we lack, and are beholden upon you to enlighten us.

It's theft by do-gooder.

@ Jeff: "you win some, you loose some." Actually, you win some, and you LOSE some.

@ George W Bullshit: The term "heritage" to you third-worlders refers to the flies that have been laying eggs in your children's eyes for so long you've given them NAMES! (The insects, not your kids.)

What jackasses these people are.

Typical California bulls_hit, such as in California there's now a difference between sex (male and female) and gender (male and female).

If I see "butch" in the men's room, I'm throwing her (it) out.

like, 1926? That's not even a hundred years old. What a bunch of schmucks

Next time i'm around the neighborhood i'm gonna help jobs out with a little vandalism

Hey Steve.... call my buddy Vittorio and make him a deal he just can't refuse....he'll set things straight.

Look in most states, to remodel you only need one outside wall.
Pick one (smallest one)! Trash the rest. Check into your local government on remodeling.

"you win some, you loose some"

Please note that the word is "lose," not "loose." "Loose" is like someone's screw is "loose," like Ballmer. It drives me nuts to see so many people misspell the word. Pet peeve, sorry. More on topic, I thought the sale and moving of the historic house was a done deal?

Funny thing is that if this had been Gates I would have laughed since I wish Mr. Gates all the worst.

The entire motive behind this so-called "preservationist" group is that they want to stick it to the rich guy. They know they'll never achieve anything remotely resembling SJ's effect on the world, so out of petty jealousy, they decide to interfere with his right to dispose of his property as he sees fit.

Woodside's a nice looking neighborhood, but if I get rich enough to buy a $10M house, I'll go somewhere where the neighbors have something better to do than act out their envy.

-jcr

A nation without a history is a nation without a past.

You need to look back at your foundation in order to determine if it can support your future development.

John, "sex" is a verb, "gender" is a noun.

Crabapple,

a house built in 1927 is not "history" its just a house, and the style "spanish revival" as someone already expressed is a fake style by an architect copying someone else's style.

There's nothing inherently tying this style of design or the house to that particular location, Jobs already offered to relocate the structure.

This is just an ego trip by a bunch of so-called "do gooders" who want to mess with other people's lives and property at no expense of their own. They will happily take away his rights to do what he wants to with his house because it costs them nothing.

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.