Morris Spazier (1877-1956) was a big man in Burbank – for a while, anyway. The Vienna native came to America in 1901 and settled first in Illinois, where he plied his trade as a chemist. He married Kankakee County gal Elizabeth “Lizzie” Dickman (1882-1961) in 1907 and the two soon took off for Los Angeles, where Spazier got into the laundry detergent business – specifically lye-based soaps, which were the standard back then. The childfree couple moved to Burbank in 1915 and Spazier, who at this point held multiple patents and was evidently quite rich, financed the construction of numerous buildings around town. In 1921, he laid out his namesake avenue between Glenoaks and 6th and also partnered with hand lotion tycoon Andrew N. Jergens to open a Jergens factory on Verdugo, which operated until 1992. The Spaziers left Burbank around 1924, spent a year or two back in L.A., then headed up north to Pacific Grove, where our subject got involved in banking and real estate. They returned to the Southland in 1934 and spent their final decades in Santa Monica.
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