This one’s a no-brainer, seeing as how this street leads to Occidental College. But why specifically “Alumni” instead of some other collegiate term? Because the Occidental College Alumni Association lobbied City Council for the name in the fall of 1922. (It was previously called Clementina Avenue.) The association was in existence by 1898, just eleven years after Oxy was founded. It couldn’t have been a very big group back then: the 1893 graduating class, for example, consisted of just two students (see Bear Avenue). Occidental College was originally located in Boyle Heights. That campus – just one small building – burned down in 1896 and Oxy was relocated to Highland Park before permanently settling in Eagle Rock in 1912.
Find it on the map:
