Lemp’s namesake is unknown. The street was christened on a 1923 tract between Vanowen and Kittridge but I found no one named Lemp associated with the tract – or indeed, in any local directories or newspapers of the era. That doesn’t mean one didn’t exist, of course. As an outside guess, the Lemp Brewery in St. Louis, once one of the largest in the county, had shut down in 1922 due to Prohibition. (Owner William J. Lemp Jr. then committed suicide, as his father and sister had each done years earlier – an unhappy family, to be sure.) It’s not impossible that whoever named our Lemp Avenue hailed from St. Louis – where there’s been a Lemp Avenue since the 1850s – or was just a beer lover.
Find it on the map:
