Hyperion was one of the Titans of Greek mythology and father to Helios, god of the sun. That would certainly make him an appropriate namesake for a street here in sunny Los Angeles, but it’s equally possible that Hyperion Avenue, laid out in 1887 on the Childs Heights tract, owes its name to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Hyperion, a rambling “prose romance” from 1836 that was still popular at the time. (Other local streets named by tract owners Ozro W. Childs, Oliver A. Ivers, and especially John S. Maltman have literary allusions: see Macbeth Street for more.) Hyperion Avenue originally ran for just a couple of blocks south of Effie. It was extended by city ordinance in 1911.
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