The suburb is situated on part of an old Witwatersrand farm called Doornfontein.[2] It would be proclaimed as suburb on 18 May 1938 and was named after the land developer's son, Cyril Cooper.[2]
Up until approximately 2000 Cyrildene was a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Unlike the old and now largely abandoned Chinatown in Newtown, which was largely made up of second or third generation South African Chinese, the new inhabitants of the Chinatown in Cyrildene are overwhelmingly first generation Chinese immigrants from mainland China.[3] The Chinatown has a paifang (arch).
A street scene of the Chinatown on Derrick Avenue in Cyrildene, Johannesburg. (May 2011)
Notable residents
L Ron Hubbard, lived in Cyrildene in the 1960s for a few months. The house is now used as a museum honoring L Ron Hubbard's contributions to South African peace.[4] It is also used as a recruitment centre of the Church of Scientology. The house, at 40 Hannaben Street, was built in 1951 for the a Greek timber merchant called Manos Broulidakis and was designed by Frank Ludwig Jarrett.[5]
^ abRaper, Peter E.; Moller, Lucie A.; du Plessis, Theodorus L. (2014). Dictionary of Southern African Place Names. Jonathan Ball Publishers. p. 1412. ISBN9781868425501.
^John Matshikiza (22 January 2007). "Hoe's my China nou?". Mail and Guardian Online. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
