Some say Hines Drive, laid out in 1913, offers a view of Hines Peak in Ventura County. I don’t know about that part, but the street is named after John Martin Hines (1859-1931). Born in Indiana to Irish immigrants, Hines spent many years in Cincinnati, first as a deputy court clerk and then as a department store manager. After a series of tragedies – daughter Margaret died in infancy, son John Jr. fell off a train and had to have his right arm and leg amputated, first wife Delia was killed by a streetcar – Hines moved to St. Louis in 1905 and then to Los Angeles in 1910. He arrived here a newlywed: second wife Mary, a Missouri woman, was a widow with three kids. (The couple inexplicably married in Omaha.) Hines ran a DTLA hotel for a couple of years before joining the California & Arizona Land Company, an investment syndicate that bought 265 acres here from Venice founder Abbot Kinney and turned it into a tract called Seven Hills, a likely reference to syndicate head Robert G. Hill being one of seven siblings, yet only Hines and fellow investor Dr. Clarence E. Stoner got namesake streets. The latter became Yorkshire Drive in 1922.
Find it on the map:
