While it obviously leads to the city of Alhambra (whereupon it becomes Mission Road), Alhambra Avenue was actually born in 1923 with the goofy moniker Pasa Hambra Boulevard. “Pasa” referred to Pasadena, even though the road didn’t actually go there, and that chicanery surely factored into a 1927 petition to change the street’s name to the more staid Alhambra Avenue. (City Council made it official the following year, simultaneously changing the existing Alhambra Avenue, on the opposite side of the tracks, to Valley Boulevard.) “Pasa Hambra” was the brainchild of Sunday, Merrick & Ruddick, prolific real estate developers in the Roaring ’20s. It was the main drag on their Boulevard Park subdivision. As far as I know, this trio never named any streets after themselves, but the “Sunday” in question was someone of moderate note: George Marquis Sunday (1892-1933), whose father Billy Sunday (1862-1935), a major league baseball player turned evangelist preacher, was incredibly famous in his day. The younger Sunday’s final years were marred by scandal and he ended his life by jumping out of his third story apartment in San Francisco.
Find it on the map:
