Given Orlando Avenue’s muddled past, I can’t say who or what inspired its name: Orlando, FL? The As You Like It character? Some long-forgotten Angeleno? At least I can tell you when it was coined: June 1923. Before then, portions of this road were variously called Greenwood Street and Olive Drive. (It’s still known by the latter name in the City of West Hollywood, north of Santa Monica Boulevard.) The City of Los Angeles had annexed this neighborhood earlier in 1923 and demanded a name change, as DTLA already had an Olive Street. Unusually, it was not civil engineers but a group of local property owners and realtors who chose “Orlando” as the new moniker. They may have picked it simply because it started with “O”, like its predecessor, and because Hollywood had just lost its own Orlando Street to Orange Drive (another “O”!) so the name was available. Trivia: Romaine Street was originally called Olive Avenue, so for a year or two, the present-day intersection of Orlando and Romaine was Olive and Olive!
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