A reader wrote to tell me that this street honors her late grandparents John (1896-1974) and Louise (1906-1970) De Santis, who had owned the land here before selling it off to subdividers. (De Santis Avenue was named in 1978-1979 by the Lesny Development Co.) I have no cause to doubt this, as records show that the couple did indeed live in Sylmar during their golden years. John De Santis was an electrician originally from Italy. While it’s not clear when he came to Los Angeles, he married Louise Passuelli, a native Angeleno with an Italian father and French mother, on New Year’s Day 1928. John was already under the employ of Beverly Hills heiress Daisy Canfield Moreno as caretaker of her palatial Silver Lake estate (see Moreno Drive). The following year, Mrs. Moreno converted her mansion into the Chloe P. Canfield Memorial Home for Girls, a boarding school named after her murdered mother (see Canfield Avenue). John stayed on until at least 1953 – he may have left that very year, when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles bought the property and the nuns took over – and in fact he and Louise resided on the estate and raised their three daughters there.
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