Birthplace of Silicon Valley in Shambles

CowTipperGore writes "Founded by William Shockley in the mid-50s, Shockley Semiconductor Lab is generally credited with starting the Silicon Valley boom. When he was unable to lure his former Bell Labs coworkers to join him, he filled his ranks with the best and brightest engineering school grads, including Gordon Moore and others who later went on to form Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. The building at 391 San Antonio Road, Mountain View, California, is the original site of the company but, unlike the HP Garage, this building has received little protection or preservation. It recently housed a fruit stand, where visitors could find a small display about Shockley above baskets of fruit. The fruit stand is now closed, leaving the future of the building in the air."

Comments

Sounds like a guy worth honoring...

[AKAImBatman]

From the Wikipedia link:

Instead he founded the core of a new company in the best and brightest new graduates coming out of the engineering schools.

Only a year later the staff was already fed up with Shockley's increasingly bizarre behavior. In one famous incident Shockley's secretary accidentally cut her finger and he became convinced it was a plot against him. He then ordered everyone in the company to take a lie detector test to track down the culprit. It was later demonstrated she had cut herself on a broken thumbtack and Shockley calmed down, but the damage was already done. This had proven to be a decisive example to several key personnel of Shockley's increasing paranoia, and a group of eight engineers decided they had had enough.

As for the building itself, I always have a bit of a struggle in deciding how to approach potential landmarks. The problem is that every time we reserve land as a "landmark", we reduce the ability of that particular area to advance. That land could be used for a larger, more modern building supporting new and exciting development. And yet, what would we lose to history if it was torn down?

In the end, I think there must be a balance struck. Unless the site is incredibly valuable to history, it should be thoroughly documented (including the transfer of any and all objects/materials related to the site to a historical society) and then allowed to be replaced or torn down.

Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring...

[gyrogeerloose]

I grew up in that general area and, trust me, there are a hundred thousand banal light industrial buildings just like the one mentioned in TFA, many of which had equally important industrial advances made in them. That hardly merits spending a single dollar to protect any of them. If the building has some architectural significance, it might be worth saving but if it's just another tilt-up/concrete block box, I say go ahead and raze the thing if there's a good reason.

Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring...

[SatanicPuppy]

I think there is an issue of scale...I mean, standing in George Washington's home, or standing on the Pyramids, contrasted with a dinky fruit stand that was really more like the building that housed the first failed startup (complete with hellish boss) that contained a group that moved on to do great things.

It's pretty slim.

Re:Sounds like a guy worth honoring...

[Plutonite]

I have stood on the great pyramid and have been in Alexander's room of enlightenment, and Saladin's wall of Cairo, and the scenes of many great battles where tens of thousands died. Let me tell you: it's all a dinky fruit stand. Chirping crickets, blowing sand. We just like to fool ourselves.

wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a building. Fuck it.

Should we preserve the garage where the first shoelace was invented? Should we go back and make a museum out of every little place a startup was born?

It's a fruit-stand. let it go. Stop living in the past.

Re:wtf?

[jeffmeden]

Your comparison is wholly incongruent. The ancient architecture that defined a civilization is remembered by visiting the historical sites of Rome. What, exactly, would future generations gain from visiting this former fruit stand? There is nothing of specific significance to what happened there. It deserves a marker on a post (which it got), the building itself lends nothing to history.

Re:wtf?

[Opportunist]

You think the Romans wouldn't have torn it down if they could have? It's not like they had reliable explosives to make it collapse like we do now. Imagine you'd have to tear down that stadium with pickaxes.

The collosseum was abandoned (or rather, ceased to be used) because they switched to the Christian faith and those games were seen as heathen. Do you REALLY think they would not have torn it down if they had any chance to? We have a rich history of destroying 'heathen' places of worship, you think some huge reminder of that time like the collosseum would have survived if they saw any chance to actually destroy it?

Seems fitting

[0racle]

Reading about his paranoia makes leaving the place in shambles seem almost fitting.

Who cares?

[Seumas]

Can we all just grow up and stop being attached to physical buildings? Who cares if it's "historic"? Push the fucker down and build something useful there. At what point do we not let every square foot be taken over with a building that has some significance to someone in the past but no tangible use in the present? The fact that we're wringing our hands over a tech building rather than sacrificing it to progress is ironic.

Lol

[SatanicPuppy]

I think we should tear it down so future generations can imagine it to have been an amazing place, instead of just another chunk of disposable cinder block.

Seriously. While I'm all for preserving historic architecture this place is a fricking dump...It was a dump even when it was new, just the kind of place that you would expect to house a startup that was run by a crackpot who only hired kids straight outta college (because his former colleagues refused to work with him).

Tells you something about the place that during the 50s a bunch of kids right out of school were so fed up that they quit in a group after one year. Think how likely that would be today, and imagine what it would have been like back then, when you expected to stay with a company much longer.