Steve Jobs allowed to tear down his home | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs allowed to tear down his home

sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com

8 pointsbrk10 comments

Hardly a news worthy item, but it always saddens me when I hear of an old historic home being demo'd. So much history and lost craftsmanship, gone at the hands of a wrecking ball.

I haven't seen the house, but from TFA it sounded like the home wasn't really all that "historic", aside from the fact that it's old. The two are not necessarily synonymous.

If it was a 17,250-square-foot, 14-bedroom mansion, I'm pretty sure it wasn't just some random ramshackle home from the 20's. But that is just an assumption.

I believe the article also stated that tearing it down and building a new 6,000sqft home would be cheaper than the renovations/repairs required, so I wouldn't go too far with your ramshackle assumptions.

Structures that earn the designation "historical" require certified craftsman for all repair work. It costs significantly more than typical home construction and therefore increases costs greatly.

Why is this "hacker news"? I find the arguments and laws overall about what private citizens can and cannot do with "their" property to be very interesting in our society.

Why is this "hacker news"? Because the Jobs worship here is palpable.

The fact that this relates to Jobs is irrelevant.

The interesting part is local municipalities attempting to dictate what people can do with their property. IME, these behaviors often coincide with their decisions around things related to technology, and usually in a non-preferred way.

And yet if the article were not about Jobs I feel there would be a bigger reaction here of "Not Hacker News"

This reminds me of a quote by Thomas Jefferson, at the bottom of this page: http://books.google.com/books?id=VGYSAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA2... (Geez that's a long URL!) Basically it says that we shouldn't build our important buildings out of wood, because wood rots. If you want something to last more than 50-100 years, make it out of something more durable.

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