Laurene Powell Jobs makes priciest buy in SF history 

Billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs has joined the 1-percenters on San Francisco’s Billionaires Row in a big way, buying a century-old mansion for $70 million to smash the local price record.

The widow of Apple visionary Steve Jobs bought the 17,300-square-foot home at 2840 Broadway Street, in Pacific Heights, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified sources.

The sellers in the off-market deal were Sloan Lindemann Barnett and Roger Barnett, who bought the property in 2011 for $33 million, according to the Journal. Sloan is the daughter of billionaire George L. Lindemann; Roger is CEO of health-supplement Shaklee.

The Barnetts had quietly shopped the house and initially sought $100 million, sources told the newspaper.

The previous San Francisco record was set in 2021 by the sale of another Pacific Heights home for $43.5 million, according to local agents.

The four-story Spanish Renaissance Revival mansion, built in 2016 on a design by society architect Willis Polk, was cited by Architecture Digest as “the most beautiful house in America.”

The Barretts hired architect Peter Marino to overhaul its nearly two dozen rooms, which wrap around a two-story courtyard crowned with a vast glass roof. The ground-up renovation took more than three years.

It was formerly owned by movie-theater heiress Georgette “Dodie” Rosekrans and her husband, John, a scion of the Spreckels sugar fortune who also manufactured Hula Hoops and Frisbees.

Four stories of glass on its north side overlook San Francisco Bay, including the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island and city landmarks in between.

The mansion sits on a 0.17-acre lot next door to a contemporary house owned by Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, according to the Journal. Also on the block is a home owned by Jonathan Ive, the designer behind some of Apple’s most successful products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad and iPhone.

Powell Jobs, 60, is the founder of Emerson Collective, an investment, philanthropy and advocacy company. 

She and her late husband, Apple’s co-founder, were married in 1991 after meeting when he gave a lecture at Stanford’s business school, where she was a student. They had three children. Jobs died in 2011.

The widower has been active in local and California real estate.

In June, Powell Jobs picked up a 1950s ranch house in Malibu for $94 million, next to three other beachfront properties she owns in prestigious Paradise Cove. The purchase brought her Malibu tally to $174 million.

In September, the philanthropist made a move to buy the bankrupt San Francisco Art Institute and its Diego Rivera fresco and start a new arts school at the historic campus at 800 Chestnut Street in Russian Hill. 

The billionaire is also among other Silicon Valley moguls to put money into an $800 million to an effort now known as California Forever, which secretly bought up farmland in Solano County to build what they bill as a new utopian city to be decided by a ballot initiative in November.

— Dana Bartholomew

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