Preservationist group gives up on appeal

A preservationist group, Uphold Our Heritage, has given up a long-running battle to save a house in Woodside, California owned by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, says a local publication. The home was originally built for a copper baron, Daniel Jackling, and designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style by architect George Washington Smith. Since 2001 however, Jobs has fought to have the home demolished and replaced with something smaller and modern.

The Almanac notes that on July 19th and without fanfare, Uphold Our Heritage actually dropped an appeal of a March 2010 ruling in Jobs' favor. An attorney for the group, Doug Carstens, remarks that the group ultimately gave up after Jobs didn't respond to a proposal from Woodside inhabitants Jason and Magalli Yoho, who offered to dismantle Jackling House and move it from 460 Mountain Home Road to 215 Lindenbrook Road, just two miles away. The Yohos were willing to pay "a very large part of the relocation and restoration costs," according to Carstens.

If the plan had gone through, the idea was for the Yohos to live in the home and open it up to the public once a year, according to UOH spokeswoman and former Jackling resident Clotilde Luce. According to Woodside town manager Susan George, however, the plan was never formally presented, and included "many unilateral stipulations," such as requiring the town to pay for relocation should other parties not do so. Carstens comments that those stipulations were later removed, and that the proposal could potentially have gone forward with an unsolicited offer of mediation within the state appellate court, in connection with UOH's appeal.

"The town's involvement," adds George, "was limited to attempting to process an application from the Yohos that would have allowed them to prepare their site for the Jackling house and [for] moving the house to the site. The application was never deemed complete and the Yohos dropped it after a point, so that was that."

More recently, Woodside has hired architectural historian Michael Corbett to run an inventory of historically significant elements in the house. So far these include things like an organ, a 50-foot flagpole and decorative tiles and woodwork. Jobs' demolition permit is contingent on preserving the artifacts, which should be given to the town of Woodside as first priority, but also potentially the San Mateo County Historical Association, and the George Washington Smith collection at the art museum of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Still be completed is the photography all of the objects, and the handover to an expert in removing such items safely.

by MacNN Staff