This 1875 street almost certainly honors Sister Ann Gillen (1819-1902), an Ohio-born nun who at the time was head of the Los Angeles Infirmary, located on Naud between present-day Ann and Sotello streets. The Sisters of Charity, initially just five or six nuns from Emmitsburg, Maryland, arrived in L.A. on January 5th, 1856. Sister Ann was among them. They had been sent by Bishop Thaddeus Amat to establish a girls’ school, which first opened in Benjamin Davis Wilson‘s former home on what was then the edge of town (present-day Alameda at Cesar Chavez). As planned, the Sisters set up a hospital the following year; Sister Ann was put in charge. The nuns incorporated the hospital as the Los Angeles Infirmary in 1869 and opened the Naud Street edifice that year. Sister Ann ran the hospital until 1881, when she retired to her old Maryland convent.
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