Two Kornblums co-owned the 1910 tract on which Kornblum Ave. was named south of Ballona Ave. (now El Segundo Blvd.): Morris Samuel “M.S.” Kornblum (1859-1916) and Abraham Harry “Abe” Kornblum (1884-1956), father and son. (The tract’s other owners included Jacob Lamb Doty and Nicholas J. Cordary.) M.S. Kornblum was born into a Jewish family in Krakow, back when Poland was part of the Austrian Empire. There he married Gusta Grünbaum (1863-1950) and they had two kids: Ada and Abe. The Kornblums emigrated to the U.S. around 1887 and lived in Tacoma, WA for a spell. They moved down to Los Angeles circa 1894 and M.S. set up a dye works. The business went through a couple of iterations before becoming the Berlin Dye Works in 1898. M.S. and Abe, who would run the dye works together, established the Berlin Realty Co. in 1910 – and in fact their tract’s portion of 139th Street was originally called Berlin Avenue. (And no, there’s no evidence that the family had ties to Berlin, Germany.) The Kornblums lived in the Westlake neighborhood and are credited with cofounding the Sinai Temple synagogue.
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