DISCOVERING OUR VALLEY - 2011
At the onset of the “Roaring Twenties”, an Austrian immigrant by the name of Fred R. Cyriasks commissioned the architect Charles Grolle to built a 10 room “mansion” on the border of Toluca Lake and North Hollywood. The house was simply spectacular.
Newspaper clipping - 1971 - Archives of The Museum of the San Fernando Valley (click on image to enlarge) - note storks on the roof.
Eventually the Cyriasks House was sold to Lt. Col. Paul Bell and his wife Ann, who lived in the Valley until Paul died suddenly in 1958. Ann continued in the “grand old place” until her children left home. She had the structure stripped of its architectural treasures and sold Cyriasks House to a developer, who had the building demolished for an apartment complex. Today no trace of the once impressive gate house, the bar-b-que house in the rear garden or the handsome wrought iron railings remain.
Members of The Museum Community are encouraged to be on the lookout for photographs and artifacts from historic Cyriaks House. We can’t restore the old mansion’s beauty but we can tell its story.
Note: As a result of this blog posting, The Museum received information from a branch of the Cyriaks family. It's really interesting!!! http://hollywood.fred.cyriac-fhp.com/
Note: As a result of this blog posting, The Museum received information from a branch of the Cyriaks family. It's really interesting!!! http://hollywood.fred.cyriac-fhp.com/
11 comments:
That is a nice find. One of the things I longed for, growing up in SFV, was a sense of continuity and the past.
Downtown San Diego was much better about preserving its old buildings and, to its benefit, was able to turn a once fairly derelict downtown into a tremendous tourist attraction and visitor site. Much of the charm emanates from the preservation.
Los Angeles has been very guilty of tearing down the old to make way for the new. Such a waste.
http://www.cyriac-fhp.com/fred/index.html and http://www.cyriac-fhp.com/fred/trlywood.htm are the two pages where everything we know about Hollywood Fred Cyriacks is located.
We knew nothing of this first of two mansions until this page was created last January. We know of and thought the second mansion at 4301 ~ 4323 Lankershim Blvd. was "the 1919 built" mansion of Fred - that's what some of the locals had thought back in the 1970s, too. It was torn down in 1980 to make way for the tire shop and large apartment complex behind it. We have no pictures of it - would have had we known it was the 2nd mansion back while it was still around when we visited it back in the 1970s. See the web site for the latest we have on all this - have been working for a month just on it.
Ben Ciriacks, genealogist, webmaster, family historian
Just updated the Hollywood Fred page and figured this might be of interest to anyone wondering about the transition from Spanish to American governance in California (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorodo and Texas, too) back in the old days. The area where Lankershim & Cahuenga intersect is one of the most historic places in the southwestern USA.
1847 Lieutenant Colonel John Charles Frémont/Fremont signs the Treaty of Cahuenga and General
Andrés/Andres Pico hands California to the Americans near Lankershim & Cahuenga. (source)
[ Page 131 of the 2007 published (Penguin Books Ltd) Michael S. Malone, "Bill & Dave - How Hewlett
and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company", book has: "By the 1950s, ... Norm Neely at his sales
office in ...North Hollywood, located on the site of the treaty signing that ended the Mexican War in
California--the Campo de Cahuenga--featured ..." ]
I lived in this house for 17 years.
I can tell you a lot about this home and the mansion next door.
I would prefer to be reached at bradbell212000@hotmail.com
Richard Bogy might be a good source for stuff, he is a fifth generation Toluca Lake resident, you can find him at his office in TL, Bogy Insurance.
I lived next to Bela Lugosi's 10841 Whipple Street house in 1967-8. The kids in my apartment building next door were bullies and it was hell on earth.
They ganged up on some kids including me.
That said, I felt comfort in knowing that non of them were brave enough to step into Bela Lugosi's yard.
In the two years I lived there I never saw a living soul on the Bela Lugosi yard or anywhere near the house.
You see, the property was all boarded up and surrounded by a large lot of wild plants and weeds. The place looked as haunted as haunted could look!
In the back of my mind I felt if worse comes to worse, I could seek refuge there and no one would dare follow me.
There is a better photograph with Bela Lugosi out front on Pinterest at this url: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/159314905544419305/
For about 3 years I lived in one of the Fred Cyriacks houses next to the Bela Lugosi house. It was no longer there but there was a hunting lodge and 5 or 6 Black Forest style cottages in a half circle around many pine trees. It was such a magical place. The couple who owned it told me that the original owner was a fervent supporter of Hitler and died after Germany lost the war. He had many mistresses and when he tired of one, he would build a house for her nearby. There were at least 3 or 4 similar houses in the neighborhood occupied by elegant old ladies. I have a few photos of my cottage but don’t know how to post them here.
The husband became sick and they had to sell the place. They didn't tell us until the last minute. I was very sorry to leave that place and wish I’d taken many more photos. It was torn down in October 1980 and replaced by a typical ugly stucco apartment complex.
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