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The town of Woodside is in possession of a 50-foot flagpole that is an artifact from the 1920s-era mansion built in Woodside by copper magnate Daniel C. Jackling and last owned by the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Perhaps it will find a home on the grounds of Town Hall. Maybe another Jackling house artifact, a logo from the Kennecott Copper Corp., will eventually go on a wall in Town Hall or in Independence Hall, the town’s meeting room.
What to do with the Jackling house collection will be up to the town’s History Committee. The Town Council discussed disposing of these items at its Oct. 23 meeting and by consensus agreed on a plan to offer them in a sequence, with the town first in line.
The town has always had first dibs on the collection of 53 items, which includes light fixtures appraised at $14,250, architectural items worth $8,325 and hardware valued at $2,710. The whole collection has an estimated value of $30,285, according to a staff report.
Any artifacts the town does not want will next be offered to the owners of a house at 410 Mountain Home Road that was designed by George Washington Smith, the architect also responsible for the Jackling house. The home is next door to the property where the Jackling house once stood. (After a decade of court battles, Jobs had the home demolished in 2011.) The owners of the home next door are remodeling, and they and their architect are interested in the antiques, said History Committee member Thalia Lubin.
The committee recommended that the town not charge the homeowners for the items. “In my mind, the value is intrinsic, historic. I hate putting numbers on things,” Lubin said. “It will take a lot of work to refurbish these items. It’s not just ‘Pick it up and install it somewhere.'”
But some council members disagreed. “I definitely think it is our fiduciary responsibility to sell these at the appraised price or greater value,” Mayor Chris Shaw said, adding that the proceeds from the sale should go to the Woodside Community Museum via the town’s community foundation. No one argued against that idea.
Councilwoman Anne Kasten suggested that, with the approval of the council, the town pick out an item or two to be installed in Town Hall or Independence Hall “to greet people when they come in so they get a sense of what we’re about,” she said. “I think that would be really, really important.”
No one on the council disagreed with that idea either. Installing the items where the public could see them would also be “a nice end to a long story that had some really profoundly sad moments in it,” Kasten said.
Click here and here and here and here and here to review stories on the long effort by Jobs to win permission to demolish the Jackling house.
Next in line for the artifacts would be the museum at the University of California at Santa Barbara, a city that is home to many of Smith’s architectural works.
The public would get a shot at buying what’s left at a silent auction, and anything remaining would be sent to salvage, according to the staff report.
