Not sure why this street employs a different spelling, but Alcyone was the so-called “star name” given to Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) by British writer Charles W. Leadbeater in 1910. Leadbeater was a member of the cultish Theosophical Society, which was big in the early 20th century, and after he discovered the 14-year-old Krishnamurti, whose father worked for the Theosophists, he declared the teenager a potential messiah. (Krishnamurti cut ties with the group in 1929 and became a New Age superstar in his own right.) Theosophy’s North American branch founded a colony in these hills called “Krotona” – see Vasanta Way – in 1912. A year later, Dr. Martha J. Kuznik (1851-1925), a retired physician and avid Theosophist formerly of Chicago, set up her own tract here, on which Alcyona Drive was soon named. Dr. Kuznik’s own home, a block away on Argyle, was known as the “White House”.
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