“Maxella” is a portmanteau honoring landowners Max and Ella Witkower – although it was the guy who bought their land who named this street. Here’s the story: Max Witkower (1872-1956) was an Austrian Jew who immigrated to Chicago around 1888. He married Ella Levy (1877-1965), a New Yorker, in 1897 and they had two kids, Geraldine and Leonard. Witkower, an attorney by trade, was appointed justice of the peace in Evanston, IL in 1921 but moved the family to Los Angeles in early 1923 to get into real estate, paying $135,000 for forty-six acres here that he intended to subdivide. (The Witkowers themselves lived in Echo Park.) Things didn’t work out for some reason, so Witkower sold the land to James Dolan, who named Maxella Ave. that July (as well as Ida and Hager avenues for his own wife; see either street for more on him), and the family was back in Evanston the following year. They returned to L.A. circa 1929. Witkower had given up the bench at that point and was focused on real estate as well as designing brassieres(!) for his son’s bra company.
Find it on the map:
