Fire razes historic IBM lab

Fire has destroyed a Silicon Valley building caught up in a court fight over whether the onetime IBM lab where engineers invented a forerunner of the modern hard drive should be preserved as a landmark.

About 75 firefighters spent more than eight hours battling the blaze at the structure, known as IBM Building 25, before bringing the flames under control Saturday morning, authorities said.

“The entire structure is a total loss,” said Capt. Anthony Pianto of the San Jose Fire Department.

Investigators were still working to determine the cause of the fire at the building, which had been vacant since 1996.

Preservationists have been battling the city of San Jose for years over plans to demolish the building, erected in 1957, to make way for a Lowe’s Cos. home improvement store.

In 2006, a California appeals court ruled the 69,000-square-foot structure could remain standing because city officials failed to prove it would hinder the construction of the store.

Lowe’s claimed it could not be competitive without building a standard 162,000-square-foot store, which would require the demolition.

Researchers working at the building invented the flying head disk drive, which improved a computer’s ability to search its memory and helped make computers smaller.

The San Jose City Council voted last year to allow the demolition in exchange for a $300,000 contribution from Lowe’s toward other historic preservation efforts in the city.