Victor Lewis Arenth (1905-1977) was a lifer at the Southern Pacific Railroad and apparently a key player in the development of this industrial zone. (The nearby Union Pacific tracks were once Southern Pacific tracks.) Born and raised outside of Pittsburgh, Arenth was the youngest of ten kids. His parents, immigrants from the Alsace-Lorraine region, had died by his twelfth birthday and so he spent the next few years living with a brother and a sister. This group moved to San Francisco in the early 1920s and Arenth began his long career with the Southern Pacific in 1927. He was transferred to Los Angeles two years later, and over the ensuing decades he worked his way up from humble clerk to traffic manager – a powerful executive position that awarded him notoriety. Arenth’s first wife Pauline died of tuberculosis in 1940 when she was only 34. He married his second wife Ann the following year. Both unions were childless (but Ann lived to be 104). Arenth retired in 1970; the earliest mention of Arenth Avenue I could find was in 1971 but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was named a year earlier as a parting gift.
Find it on the map:
