The area is found east of the Johannesburg CBD and is surrounded by the suburbs of Linksfield, Observatory and Bruma.

It is located in Region F of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality.

The suburb is situated on part of an old Witwatersrand farm called Doornfontein.

[2] It would be proclaimed as suburb on 18 May 1938 and was named after the land developer's son, Cyril Cooper.

Unlike the old and now largely abandoned Chinatown in Newtown, which was largely made up of second or third generation South African Chinese, the new inhabitants of the Chinatown in Cyrildene are overwhelmingly first generation Chinese immigrants from mainland China.