You don’t have to be a Shakespeare scholar to get the reference, but what’s the story behind these two streets? That is the question. I can tell you that they were named separately: Stratford Avenue in 1904 and Avon Place in 1909. The former was laid out on the Stratford tract, owned by Union Oil cofounder Wallace L. Hardison and his grandnephew Charles C. Teague, future head of Sunkist. Maine-born and Santa Paula-based, they had no literary backgrounds, and their tract’s advertisements made no allusions to the bard, so I suspect they chose “Stratford” simply because it sounded upscale. Avon Place was added on a small tract owned by Charles B. Ingram, an Iowa transplant who in 1923 built a house for himself and his wife on Fletcher and Oak that does bear a passing resemblance to Shakespeare’s birthplace. But it’s not like Tudor Revival houses were in short supply back then.
Find it on the map:
