A chandelier inside Steve Jobs’ abandoned mansion. Photo by Jonathan Haeber, Bearings.
On Tuesday night, Woodside town council granted Steve Jobs a controversial demolition permit to tear down his rotting mansion in Woodside, California — one of Silicon Valley’s nicest and poshest towns.
Jobs bought the mansion in 1984, the year the Mac was released, and lived there with no furniture for almost a decade. But he hasn’t lived there for nearly 10 years, and he now wants to raze the house and build a smaller, greener dwelling on the land.
The mansion is locked up, but urban adventurer and photographer Jonathan Haeber sneaked into the house and took some rare and unbelievably beautiful pictures.
Explains Jonathan: “As far as how I obtained access, I can’t really say much, other than the fact that it was back in 2006. I found the gate open (I believe there was some landscaping work being done at the time) and the font door slightly ajar. I had my camera on me, and being substantially curious found myself inside of the mansion. I came back soon afterward for a night trip, explicitly to photograph the architecture. It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life and I don’t regret doing it.”
Haeber’s photographs show Jobs’ mansion in all its faded glory. Haeber’s haunting pictures include dusty copies of The Godfather videotapes; vines creeping across interior ceilings; and the front of the boarded-up mansion with its immaculately-maintained front lawn.
The pictures are poignant and lovely, and are possibly the last that will be taken of the mansion. On Tuesday, the Woodside town council approved a demolition permit.
Jonathan is an architecture buff who is working to catalog abandoned historical buildings on the West Coast.
He lives in Richmond, California, across the Bay from Woodside, and documents his adventures at his Bearings website. There’s a video explaining his project on the TBug website.
Jon has also photographed Michael Jackson’s empty Neverland Ranch and a flooded Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans.
All Photos used with kind persmission of Jonathan Haeber.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
6 responses to “Gallery: Beautiful Pictures Of Steve Jobs’ Abandoned Mansion”
I am an advocate for restoration of historic buildings, but even I agree with Jobs here. This house was moldy, filthy and just gross. I do not agree that these pictures are beautiful. Even seeing past the surface, the house itself isn’t that special. The exterior lacks style. The whole house just has no substance. It looks like a jail. With the state it was in, it definitely needed demolished.