Kinzie, Superior, Halsted, Vincennes, Prairie, and Dearborn streets were all laid out due east of Reseda Blvd. on the same 1917 tract. Anyone who’s spent any time in Chicago will recognize these six names as Windy City roadways – so who copied and pasted them into the north Valley? With over three dozen owners listed on that tract, it’s hard to trace them all, but my vote goes to real estate man Frank Charles Hageman (1870-1953). He and his firm the San Fernando Development Company were listed first among those owners… and he came to Los Angeles from Chicago in 1902. Hageman picked up lots of land across the Valley over the years and eventually chose Chatsworth – then totally rural – for his own home. He and his partners acquired their tract’s 960 acres here back in 1907. (His first wife Gertrude, who divorced him two years later, was still listed as an owner in 1917.) In fact this land was first launched as “Citronia Acres” in January 1915, but development was interrupted when Los Angeles annexed the SFV that May.
Find it on the map:
