Kushner Companies’ new Hollywood development plan revives historic Bryan House

One of the oldest buildings in Broward County looks more like a haunted house than an important historic site.

Now there is a plan to revive the property as part of a multi-million dollar residential development that was recently approved in Hollywood.

The Bryan House, the former Hollywood home of one of Broward’s pioneer families, was nearly lost to time after years of neglect. Rain leaked through the roof. Windows were broken. The door was wide open. The structural integrity of the building was questionable at best. Not a soul had lived there for years besides the termites.

And while it did have a historic designation, it was so far from major roads, no one was paying attention to its condition.

“A lot of people forgot about [the house] because the road that it’s on goes nowhere,” said Clive Taylor, president of the Hollywood Historical Society. “You enter it either from State Road 7 or Stirling, and it curves around, and then you’re done.”

But thanks to the efforts of the Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood historical societies, the property owner and developers from New York-based real estate group Kushner Companies, the house, which is more than a century old, will be restored and repurposed into a community amenity.

Kushner plans to develop the 5.7-acre site into Hollywood Oaks, an eight-story mixed use project, featuring 470 apartments, a synagogue and, of course, the Bryan House, which will be repurposed into a community library. The Hollywood City Commission voted to approve rezoning and site plans for the development earlier this month.

Kushner Companies, a real estate empire once helmed by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is behind several luxury developments in South Florida. Projects in the works besides the Hollywood development include 300 West Broward Blvd, a mixed-use tower in Fort Lauderdale, and Surfside Apartments, a 68-unit building in the quaint Miami-Dade beach town.

Patricia Zeiler, the executive director of History Fort Lauderdale says the plan for the Bryan House is “a win-win-win-win.”

“That little farmhouse was in a really sorry state. I told my board last night that if the termites stopped holding hands, it would’ve collapsed,” she told the Herald.

The Bryan House’s much-needed restoration comes as Fort Lauderdale’s Stranahan House, the oldest surviving structure in Broward County, breaks ground on a $3 million project to update the campus surrounding the home. Unlike the Stranahan House, there’s no museum staff taking care of the Bryan House. Instead, the property has passed hands from private owner to private owner, hidden from view off a lonely winding road, slowly deteriorating over the years.

A ‘surprise’ historic home

The building’s fate changed when the current owner Sam Rogatinsky, an attorney who lives in the Emerald Hills neighborhood in Hollywood, learned that the old rundown house on the nearly five-acre Hollywood property he bought in 2021 for about $2.75 million was historic.

“It was a surprise,” he said. “Like, oh, there’s this historical house. It’s yours. It’s your baby.”

Rogatinsky, who bought the property from an older man who died the following year, said he found out the house was historic after reaching out to the city of Hollywood for documents. The previous owner just used the house for storage, likely not realizing it was a historic treasure. Rogatinsky contacted the mayor and Hollywood City Commissioner Alan Gruber, whose district includes the area where the house is located. Taylor and Zeiler then got involved.

A few potential buyers were interested in the property, Rogatinsky said, but most didn’t want to deal with the Bryan House. Kushner Companies was willing to take on the responsibility and restore it. The sale will be finalized in March, he said.

Zeiler said it is commendable for the developers to invest into restoring the Bryan House.

“They’re paying a significant investment in the history of our county with them restoring this particular house,” Zeiler said. “There’s no return on that. This is something they’re doing as a social responsibility.”

Following Taylor’s advice, Rogatinsky treated the house for termites, boarded it up and put a tarp on the roof to prevent further damage. The developers agreed to restore the house, turn it into a little library and allow the Hollywood Historical Society access to the building once a month, Rogatinsky and Taylor told the Herald.

“It’ll look pretty, like it did 100-something-years ago,” Rogatinsky said.

The house was built by the Bryan family, one of Broward’s pioneer families. Philemon Bryan, the patriarch, was a farmer, entrepreneur and former mayor of New Smyrna Beach. The Bryans built what is now the New River Inn in Fort Lauderdale, one of the city’s first hotels.

After back-to-back freezes wrecked their crops in New Smyrna Beach, the Bryans found fertile land in Hollywood and established the county’s first orange grove on the land the house stands on, Taylor said. According to city documents, the Bryan house was built in the early 1900s and was the home of John and Guilda Bryan.

The City of Hollywood officially designated the Bryan House as a “local historic site” in 1999, said city spokesperson Joann Hussey, which means any changes made to the property must be reviewed and approved by the city’s Historic Preservation Board. Some additions and alterations were made to the house from the 1920s to ‘40s.

When Taylor, Zeiler and Gruber went to go look at the property, they found a “classic case” of demolition by neglect, Taylor said. The house was so run down Zeiler didn’t feel comfortable walking inside.

“When we walked through it, I thought I might fall through the floor,” Gruber said. “It was really, really dilapidated. No one had put any TLC into that thing for at least 30, 40 years.”

The Hollywood Historical Society posted about the endangered house on Facebook last summer, getting the attention of some residents who used to live in the house many years ago. Dan Cheaney replied to the post with a black-and-white photo of his parents, brother and family dogs at the house in 1954.

“Please save it!” Cheaney wrote.

Taylor said it’s important — and difficult— to take care of historic structures before it’s too late.

“We don’t get wins in the historic community very often,” Taylor said. “We usually lose a lot of structures, and with the legislative changes that have happened recently in Tallahassee with historic districts, we’ve lost a lot of control. To have a little win like this, especially a building this important, it’s very big for us. It gives us hope that this could happen again.”

This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 4:30 AM.