Woodside

In the early 1990’s, Jobs and Powell settled into their Palo Alto home, fitting in so easily that they often left the back door unlocked. But in the old Woodside neighbourhood, Jobs ended up in a long and bitter betel over the mansion he left behind.

Jobs kept the Woodside house, a sprawling 17,000-square feet Spanish Colonial Revival with fourteen bedrooms and thirteen-and-a-half baths, with the hope of someday tearing it down and building a smaller, simpler home there.

For some years, his family used the house and its swimming pool for parties. When President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, came to visit his daughter, Chelsea, at Stanford, they stayed in another house on the wooden property.

In mid-2004, Jobs asked the town’s planning commission to allow him to bulldoze the mansion, built in 1926 for cooper magnate Daniel C. Jackling. Jobs said it was poorly built and called it “one of the biggest abominations of a house I’ve ever seen.”

Neighbours, however, called it historic and argue that it should be preserved.

The commission agreed to let Jobs demolish the house, but only if he tried for a year to find someone to move the structure somewhere else. The town council upheld that decision in early 2005. But the neighbours sued and a judge blocked the demolition.

Starting in about 2000, jobs left the house open to the elements and by late in the decade, it was rotting and falling apart.

In 2009, Jobs finally got another demolition permit. To the disappointment of neighbours, the house was torn down in February 2011. By then, however, Jobs wasn’t interested in building a new home.