Old City Hall, Ranch House Will Be Razed

California history disappears quickly, the neighbors were saying.

And so the longtime residents around the 9700 block of Walker Street on Thursday gathered around two historic city buildings scheduled for demolition next week for a new housing tract. The old-timers swapped stories and remembered that much of Cypress’ early days took place at the site.

“This building here was the old City Hall,” said Cal Meekhof, 70, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1955. Then pointing to a twin adjacent structure, Meekhof added, “And this one was the Police Department.”

The two buildings are at 9737 and 9739 Walker St. Now vacant, the structures until recently housed the ERA Real Estate Store. But from about 1958 to 1967, the rented buildings formed the hub of Cypress city government.

Darrell Essex, who retired this year after serving as Cypress city manager since 1962, said he has fond memories of the old buildings.

“When I started work here in 1962, my office also had to serve as the City Council meeting room,” Essex recalled. “On meeting nights, I had to move my desk back so we could arrange the chairs.”

Essex estimated that each of the old buildings had only about 2,000 square feet. “Everything was close together,” he said. “We were real cozy.”

He said that in 1967, when city government moved to the current, spacious Civic Center location at Orange and Grindlay streets, “we had a staff morale problem for a while because everyone missed the closeness we had at the old buildings.”

Meekhof and his wife, Mina, remembered that the old City Hall and Police Department were part of the Trautman Ranch. The owner, the late Carl Trautman, was a rancher and iron-crafter who hand-built the city-rented buildings, as well as the family’s sprawling ranch house and swimming pool next door.

The Trautman family home, also scheduled to be razed next week, has many elaborate rooms, including a large grotto-like bathroom built from native rocks.

“When we first moved here in 1955, all of the land around the Trautman place was wide open,” Mina Meekhof recalled. Her husband added: “The land was used by dairies, but the dairies started to disappear by the 1960s.”

Ruth Mitchell, 38, who now lives about a block from the old City Hall, was at the site on Thursday with her 2-year-old daughter, Danae.

“I grew up in this neighborhood,” she said. “I remember coming to the Trautmans’ house and swimming in their pool.”

Another neighbor, Julie Brooks, 66, said she had lived in the area for 29 years.

“I wanted the city to save these old buildings, but I was told that Mr. Trautman had built them so well the buildings couldn’t be lifted up and moved,” Brooks said. “I hate to see them go. It’s a piece of history.”

Mahendra Desai, president of C & A Walker Homes, Inc. of Placentia said his company will build 12 homes on the 1.38-acre site of the old City Hall and ranch.

“Nothing can be salvaged,” he said, speaking of the old buildings and mature trees. “Everything is to be knocked down.”

Some demolition work has already begun, and Desai said the remains of the old City Hall are to be razed Monday or Tuesday.

Mitchell said she was saying goodbye to the old buildings with nostalgia, but not total regrets. “Things have to move on,” she said. “New houses are now going to be built for young families, and so I’m happy for them.”