Academy Street

The academy in question is the long-gone Los Angeles Military Academy, a boys’ boarding school once located down the hill on Huntington Drive. It was founded as the Los Angeles Academy in 1895 by the Wheat siblings – Walter, Charles, and Carrie – and its campus was in L.A.’s Rampart neighborhood. Former San Diego school superintendent Walter J. Bailey (1862-1920) acquired the academy, which by then had added “Military” to its name, in 1901. Three years later, he purchased 24 acres on Huntington Drive from Henry E. Huntington, and the new campus finally opened there in 1908. But as the demand for local housing grew in the wake of Bailey’s untimely death (he succumbed to injuries from a car crash), the L.A. Military Academy went out of business in 1923. Academy Street was originally called College View Avenue in 1905 but was renamed in 1916 to avoid conflicts with Eagle Rock’s own College View Ave.