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With the latest action by the Woodside Town Council, the eve of destruction may be in sight for Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ deteriorating but architecturally significant mansion on Mountain Home Road, known as the Jackling house.
The council voted 6-1 on July 14 to approve a resolution making the town a party to a three-way contract that would give Mr. Jobs the go-ahead to dismantle the 85-year-old home and replace it with a modern family home, as he has been trying to do for eight years.
To start things rolling, the contract also needs the signatures of Mr. Jobs and Palo Alto venture capitalist Gordon Smythe. To stop things, the preservationist group Uphold Our Heritage could initiate another lawsuit.
Under the proposal, Mr. Jobs would pay $605,000 to have the house carefully taken apart by a team being assembled by Mr. Smythe, a fan of Jackling house architect George Washington Smith. Mr. Smythe would store the historically significant parts with an eye to using them in a new $4 million to $6 million home, if he finds a suitable site within five years.
The deal attempts to satisfy a San Mateo County Superior Court judge and Uphold Our Heritage, which sued to stop Mr. Jobs and did in 2006. The judge ruled that Mr. Jobs, in his initial proposal, failed to make his case of economic hardship in pursuing alternatives to demolishing the house, including restoring it. His new plans included such an analysis.
Uphold has expressed distaste with the Smythe proposal and could sue again, but the same judge who ruled in Uphold’s favor has now given the group until Aug. 3 to articulate reasons for not allowing Mr. Jobs to proceed.
Uphold did not respond to a request for further comment by press time.
Mayor Mason explained his objection to Mr. Smythe’s proposal in an e-mail, saying that as a mitigation measure, dismantling and reconstructing a replica of a historic Woodside house “using some miscellaneous bits and pieces” is unacceptable.
Mr. Mason is an architect and experienced in the historic renovation of Spanish Colonial style structures, including the Santa Barbara Biltmore.
Organ needs home
Daniel Jackling, the copper magnate and first owner of the mansion, installed a pipe organ at some point, and it’s generally considered to have become a historically significant artifact.
Mr. Smythe said he has no plans to put the organ in his house, and that it will be stored and protected while he looks for someone familiar with such instruments to “give it a good home.” Its current home is lacking.
The roof has a leak, and the organ has suffered “lots of damage” from weather, including rust, Councilman Dave Tanner told the council and Mr. Smythe.
Mr. Smythe concurred. “My understanding is there’s been more damage to the organ. We want to go in and assess what that damage is.”
And now the mayor comes in………I smell a rat. This now has all the makings for a wonderful French or Italian comedy whereby the citizens could care less while the dowagers in a rather insignificant village want to make it important in order to rescue an organ from a decaying mansion and get it working and the brass shiny new so that it becomes an attraction which draws thousands of visitors from the neighboring villages who discover the people who run the town were made rich by a 60 year old crime which involved the robbery from German soldiers who stashed the gold and rare paintings under the cathedral after WWII and which the remaining leading citizens (all crooks), must find a way to hide the tons of gold which remain and must dispose of it before their secret pasts are revealed. First draft. The actual story is about as ridiculous.
Will these parts and pieces of the Jackling house go the same way as the Drexler house?
If you recall Elsie Drexler lived in a home that was designed by Julia Morgan. It was on the property that Larry Ellison owns and the unique craftman style home did not fit in with the japenese village mr. Ellison was building. After much wrangling the house was dismantled and a developer promised to reconstruct the home at a later date. It currently sits warehoused in Half Moon Bay.
All these court cases and delay over the dilapidated jackling home will probably suffer a similar fate. Lets see if the jackling house really gets reused.
Ohhh, those poor old decaying wrecks of once lived in grand houses.
One ending up in an almost bankrupt town like Half Moon Bay and its brass fixtures gathering an unwanted patina from the cold foggy air.
The second, more than likely will end up in the same place; same County AND there is a Woodside venture capitalist and philanthropist
who owns a large beach house there who just might make room for the Jackling place. Wouldn’t that count as a “philanthropic” act?