Although its original layout has since vanished under the Van Nuys Airport, this 1951 street was named for and by Monogram Home Builders, run by Albert A. Strasner (1906-1990) and Ben W. Wishnow (1892-1966); they apparently acquired the business from one Leonard Grayson the year before. (A 1949 article quotes Grayson as saying, “the homes we’ve built are as individualized as a personal monogram.”) Strasner and Wishnow were both Jewish men who escaped the Soviet Union and raised families in the Midwest: the Strasners in Detroit, the Wishnows in Chicago. Wishnow, who mostly made the news when he was robbed (on at least four occasions!), was running a gas station on Beverly Blvd. by 1941; Strasner moved here by 1948. It’s not known how they met, but they had gone their separate ways by 1958, the year Strasner relocated to Tucson.
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