Siraik Zakarian, biochemist who bought and restored Bergdoll Mansion, has died at 82

Siraik Zakarian, 82, of Spring Garden, biochemist, resident and restorer of the historic Bergdoll Mansion, died at home Thursday, Aug. 15, of cardiac arrest after several years of health difficulties.

Dr. Zakarian was a distinguished biochemist who studied endorphin peptides. She was an assistant professor at the Basel Institute for Immunology in Geneva, Switzerland, and a researcher at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London. Closer to home, she worked at University of Pennsylvania’s Wistar Institute and published numerous scientific articles and lectured around the world.

Referred to as “an elegant woman of great culture” by friend and neighbor Jim Pavlock, Dr. Zakarian attended Rutgers University and earned a Ph.D. in 1969 in biology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellow. After spending a few years working abroad, she returned to Philadelphia in 1986 when she started living in the Bergdoll Mansion, which was built in 1886 by architect James H. Windrim — a building she would famously go on to buy and restore after a devastating fire in 1989.

As a child, Dr. Zakarian would often visit her great uncle, who was a tenant in the mansion, which was owned by the family of Emma Bergdoll, the owner of the City Park Brewery. In the 1960s, while she attended college and graduate school, her mother “vetoed the idea of my having my own apartment but finally let me rent an apartment in the house because my uncle could keep an eye on me,” Dr. Zakarian told The Inquirer’s Sally Downey in 1994.

Largely unimpressed by the majestic mansion with eight bedrooms, nine bathrooms, two kitchens, multiple fireplaces adorned with mahogany woodwork, frescoes, and mosaics — “I had been to Europe, and I had seen lots of beautiful houses,” she said — Dr. Zakarian dropped in to say hello to Louis Bergdoll, in 1986. Louis, Emma’s grandson who was then living in the mansion, told her that her great-uncle’s apartment was vacant. Dr. Zakarian moved into the mansion, which by then had grown shabbier and had seen better days.

After a fire broke out in 1989, Dr. Zakarian bought the mansion out of anger. A local builder had offered to buy it for $50,000 less than the price of a nearby “modest” rowhouse. “I was flabbergasted,” she said in 1994. “That did it.”

“She bought the mansion and quickly repaired the roof, installed a security system and outside lighting, replaced all 94 windows, and filled several dumpsters with 80 years’ worth of debris,” wrote Downey. “She swept up enough soot and cinders to please even Cinderella’s stepmother.”

Most people in Spring Garden knew her as the woman who bought the Bergdoll Mansion but Dr. Zakarian was, in her friend Pavlock’s words, “obviously so much more than a house.”

Siraik Zakarian was born in Jerusalem on Aug. 4, 1942, and later lived in Jordan and Syria. According to Pavlock, she moved to Damascus as a child where her father was the private tutor of King Hussein of Jordan. She went to school in Switzerland, before moving to Williamsport, Pa., where she lived with her grandmother and attended high school.

She was a beloved neighbor who would often throw dinner parties. “Siraik was a wonderful cook,” Pavlock said. “She would cook classic French food, but also loved her Armenian and Middle Eastern heritage. She cooked a lot of Middle Eastern food, and of course, it was always the finest cuts of meat or seafood.”

She also loved to tend to her garden. Back in 1994, Dr. Zakarian, with the help of landscape artist James Farr, planted 6,000 crocuses and 12,000 daffodils and tulips on the mansion’s terraces. She converted the parlor and sitting room into her apartment.

Dr. Zakarian devoted years of her life to the mansion, restoring it to its former glory and renting it out to tenants. She was an active member of the neighborhood’s civic association until health problems slowed her down in the last five years.

She spoke several languages and was very proud of her Armenian heritage. Her friends will remember Dr. Zakarian for the generosity of her spirit and her eye for beauty.

Dr. Zakarian is survived by her brother and his family. On Aug. 23, her close friends and family gathered at her home to celebrate and remember her life.