While its name elicits giggles, Dicks Street’s provenance is unknown. Owners of the 1923 tract on which it was born were Harry and Florence Coger and newlyweds J. Ross and Lulu Charles. Joseph Ross Charles (1876-1933) was a real estate agent with an office just blocks away at Santa Monica and Hilldale, so I suspect it was he who named this street, although I found no Dicks in his family – or in those of the other owners. There’s an off chance that the street’s namesake is J.R. Dicks, a WeHo-based conductor at the Pacific Electric Railway in the 1930s. J. Ross Charles himself was a conductor at the railway before turning to real estate, but I found no evidence that he and Dicks knew each other or that Dicks was working here by 1923. In fact I found out nothing more about J.R. Dicks. So the mystery endures. P.S. While some say streets in this neighborhood were named after silent movie stars (e.g., Norma Place), and thus Dicks honors Richard Dix (1893-1949), there’s no truth to it.
Find it on the map:
