LANDMARKS / COUNTY HISTORICAL SITES : Hotel’s Past Is Worth Checking In To

* HISTORY: The Piru Hotel was built as a second home for David C. Cook, Piru’s founder, whose main residence is the town landmark, the Piru Mansion. The hotel’s architect and date of construction are unknown, but it is estimated to date from 1888.

* LOCATION: 691 N. Main St., Piru

* HOURS: Contact the Ventura County Cultural Heritage Board for information on tours.

At the turn of the century, the Piru Hotel was the only hotel between Santa Paula and Castaic Junction. It housed cattle buyers and oilmen, as well as attracting an occasional movie company on location. Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith stayed here in 1911 when they filmed “Ramona” at Rancho Camulos. Their names can still be read in the hotel register preserved by Harry Lechler in his private museum in town.

Lechler was born in the hotel in 1912 when his parents owned it and spent his boyhood years there. One of his chores was emptying the slop jars from the guests’ rooms. At the time, the building had only one bathroom.

Lechler recalls hearing guests ring the bell at the front desk after the family had gone to bed. His father’s response was casual.

“He didn’t even get out of bed,” the Piru native said. “He’d call out ‘Yep, what is it?’ Somebody would say, ‘How about a room?’ ‘Register’s on the desk,’ he’d say, ‘First door to the left. See you in the morning.’ ”

Lechler has the hotel’s roll-top desk from the lobby, the old telephone switchboard that served not only the hotel but the whole town, as well as odd dressers, washstands and a slop jar.

When his parents bought the building in 1911, they changed its name from Mountain View Hotel to Round Rock Hotel for the huge boulder in the front lawn. In the 1950s, it was converted into a rest home and housed elderly residents until 1989. By that time it had acquired four more bathrooms and had 15 bedrooms.

The building is now vacant, but owner John McKinnon of Fillmore said its distinctive architecture continues to attract the film industry for use as a set. The hotel appears in such recent films as “The Five Heartbeats” and “The Silhouette.”

McKinnon said set designers often choose the building to represent a setting in the Old South or New England. “We have the palms on one side and the pines on the other,” he said.