Apple has always attempted to respect historic landmarks in planning its various real estate expansions, and as the San Jose Mercury News reported today, two buildings with a full century of history between them will coexist as the company continues its trend by preserving a 100-year-old barn to remain on the campus of its new headquarters.
The Glendenning Barn was built in 1916, exactly 100 years before construction on Apple’s new facility is expected to be completed. It was carefully disassembled by construction crews to ensure that it wouldn’t be damaged as the new campus was being built, with every individual piece being numbered and preserved so that the barn can be rebuilt exactly the way it was once construction is finished.
Before becoming the site of Apple’s new HQ, the land was simply an apricot farm owned by several generations of the Glendenning family. The family eventually pooled resources with several other nearby landowners and sold the land to one of the first major Silicon Valley tech firms, Varian Associates. From the 1970s on it was used by HP, until the campus was closed in 2010 and sold to Apple.
Apple plans to use the barn to store the equipment that will be used in maintaining the facility’s landscaping as well as sporting equipment.
