I live in one of fairly many
Grade II Listed buildings in the United Kingdom, much older but not quite as large as old Steve's, and there is no surprise when purchasing such a building that you are significantly restricted in what you can do to it.
England has a very long history of common people being subject to the will & whim of the rich & powerful & connected.
The USA exists precisely because some of those common people got tired of such treatment and made it clear they would do with their land what they saw fit.
What is it about the past that you don't like, Jobs?
How it gets in the way of the present & future.
When people stop shelling out good money, time & resources
of their own (not confiscated-at-gunpoint taxpayer funds) for old things, maybe it's time to stop preserving what people don't actually want and start replacing it. Remember, Apple does not maintain a "museum of past Apple products" because those products no longer sold are, by current standards, failures - they may have been great then, but nobody wants to put up their own money for them today.
Yes, there is a valid argument and sociopolitical expenditure to preserve things which may not be of sustained current value. Question is where to draw the line. AFAIK, nobody actually
wanted that house, and few are truly enamored by Spanish Revival architecture to a degree worth the substantial cost of preservation of such an example, and fewer still are truly enamored by the decedent who built it. The argument, IMHO, centers more around those wanting to either criticize Jobs at any opportunity, or whose relevance hinges on ability to find old homes they can spin as "historic".
Suitable acreage is costly in that region. The cost of preserving the "interesting creation" far exceeds the cost of replacing it with another interesting creation; as none are interested in putting up the money to preserve the former, those interested in putting up the money to create the latter win.
And yes, the old gives way to the new. Physical things are not important of themselves. It's not about wanton destruction for sake of destruction, it's about moving forward and removing obstacles thereto.