HTLA- Episode 63: L.A. Explained Who's Naming Our Streets

Brian De Los Santos  00:00

Ever wonder what to do if a sinkhole swallows your car, or who controls those redistricting maps, [music in] or why the hell is LAX such a mess?

Caitlin Hernández  00:09

[street ambi] There are a lot of things about the city that just don't make sense.

Brian De Los Santos  00:12

Maybe you want to know how streets get their names.

Mark Tapio Kines  00:15

[street ambi] Broadway was not originally called Broadway. It was called Fort Street. In the late 19th century, there was a printer named Fred Lind Alles, who had a lot of German clients, who kept confusing Fort Street with Fourth Street.

Caitlin Hernández  00:26

People want to know how they can change that or, or why it's designed in this way in the first place.

Mark Tapio Kines  00:31

They'd say, Okay, go on Fort Street and then turn right on Fourth Street. He got sick and tired of that, so he actually lobbied the city to change it to Broadway.

Brian De Los Santos  00:39

From LAist Studios, this is How To LA. I'm Brian De Los Santos. Today we're launching a new recurring segment: LA Explained.

Caitlin Hernández  00:48

My name is Caitlin Hernández. I'm the LA Explained reporter at LAist. [street ambi] What I do is really just helping people understand the city and understand how it works, [car honks] or maybe at times doesn't.

Brian De Los Santos  01:00

Caitlin's gonna take us on some deep dives into some of those mysteries that can be easy to take for granted.

Caitlin Hernández  01:07

These things aren't broadcast on billboards or TV ads. They're like little, little backroom applications that you don't really know exist, until you know they exist. There are systems set up that you have to learn how to navigate and work in to affect change in that way. [child talking in background]

Brian De Los Santos  01:22

So how'd you stumble upon this story of learning about the street names and what they mean to the city?

Caitlin Hernández  01:28

It was uh, from a reader question, actually. They essentially were like, Hey, there's this batch of streets near me. 37th Drive, 37th Place, 37th Street. [music out] Why is it like this? It's confusing. That just kind of like spurred me going down this rabbit hole of looking at why the city is designed this way to begin with. And so now we're standing here at Ord and Broadway to learn some other cool things about our early street names.

Mark Tapio Kines  01:51

This is the heart of Chinatown right here. We are surrounded by little vegetable markets and herb markets.

Brian De Los Santos  01:57

This is Mark Tapio Kines.

Mark Tapio Kines  01:59

I run a website and Instagram called L.A. Street Names.

Brian De Los Santos  02:02

And Caitlin tells me you have a cute nickname.

Mark Tapio Kines  02:05

[laughs] [music in] Some people call me the 'King of L.A. Streets.' We are on Ord Street in Chinatown. Way back when, this was dirt roads, and there were places like blacksmiths and saloons, [sound of horse and carriage] horses and carriages going down muddy streets and uh, people speaking Spanish more than Chinese. It's named after a fellow named Edward Otho Cresap Ord or E.O.C. Ord as he was known. Born in 1818. [music changes] 1849, the Gold Rush was on. California was about to become a state the following year. The city leaders of Los Angeles, the ayuntamiento, [music out] wanted Los Angeles to grow properly. They had a population of about 1600 people, almost all of whom lived around the plaza. [music in] It had a very violent reputation. The Gold Rush guys were coming in and they were rowdy, and th- they're drinkers, and there was cases of a murder every week back when the population of Los Angeles was only 5000. So we had a murder rate of 1%. The ayuntamiento wanted to lay out new streets. They wanted a map [music out] that was really the dream of Los Angeles for how it was going to grow. They hired him. They paid him $3,000, which they didn't actually have, but they were going to pay him $3,000. He laid out two new neighborhoods. One is right here [music in] in present day Chinatown, and then the other is across the freeway, which of course didn't exist in 1849, for downtown. A lot of the streets that he laid out have kept their names. Hill Street, Flower Street, Spring Street, Hope Street. Those all were named in 1849. He was considered not just the guy who made the first map of Los Angeles, but he was a Civil War hero. He was actually responsible for getting Robert E. Lee to surrender at the Appomattox Court House, which ended the Civil War. So he was a quite a big deal in his day. But Ord did not name the street after himself. He named it High Street. They actually renamed at Walters Street in 1887, and that lasted for all of three years, and then it became Ord in 1890.

Brian De Los Santos  04:10

And I think it's kind of interesting that like, it's in Chinatown, and I just want to make that a point because LA changes all the time. He might have known like, Oh, my, my name is gonna be on the street that's centered around the Asian and Asian American community. [music out] So I just want to highlight that how like street names may have come from the past, and they are still in the present, and they keep on changing with the neighborhood. I don't know any thoughts about that?

Caitlin Hernández  04:31

I think this goes back to like, what I'm trying to do with L.A. Explained is like helping people understand how [person talking in background] life in L.A. is designed to work. These street names are like hundreds of years old at times, but they still stick around. They might have like a different path, or like, they might be stretched out, but like they haven't changed.

Brian De Los Santos  04:49

[car ambi] I sent you the last stop, which is just a little bit south. Whoever did the mapping did it like, correctly. Shout out for that.

Brian De Los Santos  05:02

[street ambi] We're in Solano Canyon, this little pocket off the 110 near Dodger Stadium in Elysian Park. It's actually one of the oldest neighborhoods in LA.

Mark Tapio Kines  05:10

[freeway ambi] We're at Solano Avenue and Casanova Street. Now Solano was named for Alfred Solano, who laid out this neighborhood as did his father Francisco Solano. And Casanova Street is for Alfred Solano's mother, Rosa Casanova. So we've got this weird confluence of these homes that are about 120 years old with a couple of dingbat apartment buildings built in the 1950s right next to the freeway. And there is an actual on ramp and off ramp right, that goes straight into this residential neighborhood. This is a testament to what had to happen when the freeway was built. And in fact, there were a couple of streets that used to be there that are now no longer there. Yolo and Yuba Streets. The 110 erased them. I mean this, this neighborhood is just, is so old, and so relatively untouched except for this freeway, [laughs] which cuts right through it.

Brian De Los Santos  05:36

All right, y'all get the point. It's loud at this intersection. So we're gonna step away from the noisy freeway. So who's choosing these names? Like, how are they getting picked?

Mark Tapio Kines  06:15

Basically, there's two different ways that a street gets its name. It's either through a tract or through a city ordinance. And if it's from a tract, that means it's a private landowner who chooses the street's name. If the street hasn't been used already, then the city will usually approve it. The city ordinances happen when you have duplicate street names as happened a lot back then. As L.A. was growing, it was annexing a lot of smaller towns like Eagle Rock, Venice, Hollywood, and of course, the entire San Fernando Valley. So you would have duplicate street names. And so the city would say, Well, we can't have five Hamilton Avenues. This was a time before zip codes, so they would have to change the names a lot.

Brian De Los Santos  06:52

Mark says the names the Solano family picked were unique enough to stand the test of time. And some of them have pretty funky stories.

Mark Tapio Kines  07:00

Alfred Solano named all the streets for family members. So there is a small street called Bouett Street, or Bouett Street. I don't know how they pronounce it. But that was named for his brother-in-law, who was kind of a Jack of all trades and master of none, and in uh, the early 1900s, he was overseeing a chain gang, a prison chain gang. He saw an inmate try to escape and so he got on his horse, but he uh, didn't get on well enough, and he slipped off his horse and he broke his neck and he died. [laughs]

Brian De Los Santos  07:27

Oh, my God! [laughs] What kind of scene is that?

Mark Tapio Kines  07:30

I mean, they're interesting now. Of course, they were tragic back then. But uh, once you let a century or so pass, they become sort of fascinating and even kind of darkly humorous.

Brian De Los Santos  07:39

Alright, so I was checking out this intersection and looking at notes, and I believe there was some historic mention of same sex couples here with the Solano family. Is this story part of LA's early Queer history?

Mark Tapio Kines  07:53

You know, unfortunately when you're, when you're talking about L.A.'s Queer history way back when, if there's no love letters, you just don't know because that's not the sort of thing that they would print in [music in] newspapers. But yes, Alfred Solano's wife, Brooks Solano- There's a Brooks Avenue out here that he named for her. Records show that she was living with another woman. The Solanos divorced sometime in the 1910s. Ella stayed with this woman all the way until her death, for like 30 years. And you see in the paper, they were always traveling together; they were always showing up at parties together. So from a 21st century point of view, you can infer a romantic relationship.

Brian De Los Santos  08:34

I think that is totally interesting to hear because usually we hear about Queer history and uprising in like, West Hollywood and other parts of the city. But somewhere that has a Solano family name to it- To me, it was kind of a gag, like, Oh, wow, we're in the middle near downtown. So anyway, as we're looking around and talking about history here, [music out] [freeway ambi] talking about how the freeway cuts this neighborhood in half, we spotted a pedestrian tunnel that goes right under the 110.

Mark Tapio Kines  09:09

Yeah, that's real interesting. See, this is what I was telling Caitlin, like, it's important for me to actually go to the streets that I write about because usually I just work from home. You know, there's 50,000 streets in Los Angeles County. I, I'm not gonna be able to walk all of them. But it makes such a difference when you go to one and you actually walk around and look around and see what you can see and where it goes.

Brian De Los Santos  09:32

And yeah, it's nice that there's this pedestrian underpass here, but...

Mark Tapio Kines  09:36

This is a very dark tunnel. There are some busted lights. It's not the safest place. There's uh, a couple of mattresses and some graffiti and some uh, otherwise grim things.

Brian De Los Santos  09:51

***Brian speaks Spanish to a woman

Unidentified Speaker  09:52

****by Attorney Niniola squirrel. This was more common Tango Talita calm us Cena came on the scene in your But Okay, the second you don't have to settle on that. pasarela por que si.

Brian De Los Santos  10:05

She's on her way to get her kid from school. So she says he always passes by and uses that uh, underpass but that she's not 100% comfortable with it. So she would prefer something above the, the highway, like a bridge.

Brian De Los Santos  10:19

[music in] All right, y'all. Last stop is a street I know all of you guys are familiar with: Pico.

Caitlin Hernández  10:27

Pico Boulevard is actually named after Pío Pico, the last governor under Mexican rule of Alta California before it, California became a US state. He put LA City as the province capital of Alta California at that time. So for a while we were on the map instead of Sacramento. You know, Pico Boulevard is a long stretch of road, so to get that kind of like name recognition at that level was pretty big. It goes from like downtown area all the way to the beach.

Brian De Los Santos  10:55

So that's the Pico part. This might sound kind of like a dumb question, but why Boulevard?

Caitlin Hernández  11:02

Boulevards are supposed to be like these broad streets that are like main thoroughfares. The street has to be about 100 feet wide. You might see maybe some like, center medians pop up. You know, these little suffixes are little indicators that influence how we kind of like experience our neighborhoods, our communities. And this is a really clear example of what that's supposed to look like.

Mark Tapio Kines  11:25

Pico Boulevard actually started off as 13th Street. Los Angeles never had an unlucky 13th Street. They said instead of naming 13th Street, they named it Pico Street, but they didn't continue with names. They went right back to 14th and 15th and 16th. So, so obviously somebody in the 1850s was very superstitious, and either Pico was considered a good luck charm, or he was considered an unlucky character because he did actually have kind of a bad senior citizenship. He lost a lot of money to gambling debts and to real estate swindles. He and his brother Andrés owned pretty much the entire San Fernando Valley, but Pico sold his half to a fellow named Isaac Lankershim, and anybody who goes around North Hollywood knows the name Lankershim. He sold it specifically so he could build his hotel, Pico House, which still stands, but you could probably say that Lankershim got the better uh, end of the deal.

Brian De Los Santos  12:13

[street ambi] I wouldn't be the host I am without talking about Sepulveda, about La Cienega, versus the other way that people say it. Whether you're Black, Latino, Asian, white, whatever background you're from, there is a way if you've been here long enough, there's a way to phonetically say these names. What have you heard? You're the street name king.

Mark Tapio Kines  12:35

Well, I mean, it sort of speaks to L.A.'s sort of fractured consciousness. You know, we can assume that the [uses Spanish pronunciation] Féliz family who owned the Rancho Los Féliz, called themselves 'Féliz.' But at some point, it became [uses anglicized pronunciation] 'Los Féliz' just like [uses Spanish pronunciation] 'Los Angeles' became [uses anglicized pronunciation] 'Los Angeles.' And actually there was a time where it was [uses another anglicized version] 'Los Angeles'. [music in] The first street that I lived on in L.A. was Curson, [ker sahn'] or I've heard it called Curson [ker' son] or Curson [curse' on] and that was for an Englishman. So things change. Who knows, maybe in 50 years, we'll be calling it [uses Spanish pronunciation] 'Los Angeles' again. And there you have it.

Brian De Los Santos  13:08

I love it. [laughs] There you have it! That's it for today. Special thanks to Mark Tapio Kines for sharing his passion for LA street names in beautiful nerdy detail.

Mark Tapio Kines  13:19

Well, the, the source of Normandy is actually unknown, but it used to be called Rosedale Avenue. It's named after the Rosedale Cemetery, which is now called... [duck under]

Brian De Los Santos  13:27

Seriously, Mark knew the entire history of every street name we walked by.

Brian De Los Santos  13:31

So we are trying to find a street name that Mark doesn't know squat about. We're walking east on Pico heading towards Mariposa... [duck under]

Brian De Los Santos  13:40

If you want to learn more about your street, check out his project on Instagram, L.A. Street Names.

Mark Tapio Kines  13:45

There used to be streets just named A Street, B Street, C Street. Each one was renamed in 1897. B became Brendo. C became Catalina. I became Irolo. H became Higuera. For some reason, they decided not to keep that, so they changed it to Mariposa.

Brian De Los Santos  13:47

And a very special thank you to Caitlin Hernández for bringing us this story today. They're gonna be hanging out with us here and there for more L.A. Explained.

Brian De Los Santos  14:10

We are uh, coming up on Fedora Street. What's up with that name?

Mark Tapio Kines  14:13

What's interesting about Fedora is you know it as the men's hat, but the name originated as a French play 'Fédora' in the uh, late 19th century. It was written... [duck under]

Brian De Los Santos  14:24

If you have a question that needs some L.A. explaining, send it our way on LAist.com/LAExplained. You can also find all of Caitlin's articles there too.

Mark Tapio Kines  14:33

...It was a huge hit. Fanny Davenport actually brought it to Los Angeles in 1888. As soon as the play came out, there were all these things that were branded 'Fédora'.

Brian De Los Santos  14:42

Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. [music out]