IBM Building 25 Destroyed by Fire
Fire destroyed another historic building in San José, Building
25 on the IBM campus in southern San José. The building was the center of a controversy
pitting preservationists against Lowe's who had planned a new store on
the site, and wanted to demolish Building 25. Building 25 was designed
in 1957 by architect John Bolles and was arguably the first of the
modern low rise office buildings in San José. It featured floor
to ceiling windows, a design motif reminiscent of a punch card, and a
horseshoe pit. The building housed advanced development and research on
disk drives. The building was a source of pride for IBM. In 1959
CEO Thomas Watson Jr. escorted Soviet Premier Nikta Khrushchev on a
tour of the building. Reportedly Khrushchev was more impressed by the
cafeteria than the building and research happening there. IBM vacated
the building in 1996.
Fires destroy historic buildings in San José
Posted by
on
January 19, 2008
Two fires have destroyed historic buildings in central San
José. The first fire
destroyed the Houghton-Donner Mansion on July 19, 2007. You can see more on
the
NBC11
Website.
The Victorian masterpiece was built in 1881. It was the home to early
San José mayor Sherman Houghton and his wife, Eliza Donner
Houghton, a survivor of the Donner Party tragedy. The house had been
noted by the Landmarks Commission as "the most historic building in San
José".
The local preservation community had helped convince the City to spare
the building from
a risky move or even destruction, as part of construction of parking
for the new City Hall.
The building was unoccupied, and there were no injuries in the fire,
but an important piece of San José's
historic fabric is gone.
The second fire on January 17, 2008 destroyed the Porter Stock
building, a two-story masonry structure, designed by architect J.
Lenzen and built in 1867.
Here's
the slide show from NBC11. The building was undergoing renovation with funding from the Redevelopment Agency. It had been
red-tagged after the Loma Prieta earthquake, as unreinforced masonry buildings from that era are extremely dangerous in
earthquakes. This is also a tragic loss.
Historic/Interesting Bridges and Tunnels
Posted August 25, 2007
At the meeting of the California Council for the Promotion of History
last fall, there was a Caltrans presentation of the results of the
revised survey of historic highway bridges and tunnels. (Andy
Hope was the project lead on the effort.) In May, KPIX Eye on the Bay
had a segment about the other bridges of the Bay Area. Everybody knows
the major ones, but there are lots of less well know, but still
interesting bridges in the Bay Area. So
here's
a map showing both the Caltrans list and the KPIX list. Many of the
photo sharing web sites allow geocoding of the uploaded pictures, and
there are available plugins to show these on a map like this one.
As if an SIA member needed an excuse to go out and take pictures
of bridges...
jay
History San José Web Pages
Posted by
on July 1, 2007
In collaboration with KB Homes, History San José has created
an
excellent set of web pages about the former Del Monte #3
cannery,
Cannery
Life.
This is the latest in a series of web environments documenting historic
sites in San José that have been lost to redevelopment. They
are
a new idea for compliance with Section 106 by the developers of these
sites. The Cannery Life site includes oral histories and other
interesting features.
Southern California Chapter Exploration
Posted by
on July 29, 2007
As the SIA Local Chapter Coordinator, I was approached by Don Huseman
about the possibility of forming a Chapter in Southern California. In
discussing the possibility, we agreed that putting up some contact
information on this web site would be a good place to start. So, if you
or folks you know would be interested in helping form a Chapter in
Southern California, please contact Don at (310) 547 4604 or
2007 Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tours
Posted by
on July 1, 2007
The
brochure
describing the 27th Annual Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tours is
available. Many of these have some IA aspects to them. Some of the most
relevant ones have been put onto the Forum calendar.
Here's
a map
showing the starting locations of the tours and their descriptions from
the brochure. Another form of the map is a KML file that can be opened
in
Google Earth
(which can be downloaded for free from this site.) Right click
here, save
the KML file and after installing Google Earth, open it.
Maps & Mashups - Update
Posted by Jay McCauley on
April 20, 2007
A lot has happened in the on-line mapping area since the July 2006
Newsletter article
Wikis, Mashups & Maps.
After the fascinating talk by Caltrans Architectural Historian
Andy Hope on Thursday, April 19, 2007, I took a little time to
show some of the latest mapping things I've been working on. The first
uses the brand new Google™ My Maps package, which lets you create
your own annotated maps. As an exercise, I created a
map of some of the possible destinations for SIA 2008 tours.
These are regular Google maps, with smooth pan, zoom, and integrated
satellite/aerial imagery. This is still an experiment, but shows
promise and only took an hour or so to create.
An earlier effort started after the
talk by Gray Brechin
on the Living New Deal Project (originally, the New Deal Legacy
Project). I was quite interested in the project, especially the
map of New Deal locations in San Francisco. It was an opportune time,
as the team was contemplating the next step in their project, and found
the idea of a new type of on-line, dynamically created map to be
interesting. I also wanted to experiment with a new technology for
creating database driven web sites, Ruby on Rails. After climbing a
really steep learning curve, the new
database/map mashup
went live in December 2006. This is, at best, an "engineering
prototype", just a demonstration of what's possible with a modest
software development effort. This uses Yahoo!™ maps which have
similar functionality to the Google maps (it's a REALLY competitive
area).
Another tool is Google Earth. For the 2006 SIA Fall Tour to Ely, NV, I
created a file in GPX format of the destinations and recommended extra
excursions. GPX is the standard download format for personal GPS
receivers, used in
geocaching (high tech treasure hunting). To take a look, follow the note at the end of the
writeup on the Fall Tour (the paragraph that starts "Just for fun").
The Forum
Posted by Jay McCauley on March 6, 2007
One of the new features of the site is a
Forum. The Forum
allows registered users (don't worry, it's free, and easy to register)
to post information of interest to our community, including events on
our calendar. If you have events of interest, places you
recommend for visits, or just generally useful information,
feel free to add your own posts to the Forum or comment on posts.
The Forum supports an
RSS
feed so you can stay current without constantly visiting the
Forum. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a new way to stay in touch
with web sites. The RSS feed can be plugged into your browser like a
bookmark, or on your ISP's dashboard. If there is new information,
headlines will be displayed along with links to the actual content.
There are separate RSS feeds for the site itself and for the 2008
National Conference.