Named after Arcadia Bandini de Baker (1827-1912), once the richest woman in the Southland, who had owned up to 8,000 acres here on the former Rancho San Antonio. (For more on her, see DTLA’s Arcadia Street.) Her maiden name “Bandini” began gracing this neighborhood by 1907. When oil interests came to the area in 1920, one drilling company dubbed itself Bandini Petroleum. Bandini Boulevard itself was named in 1924 when the Bandini Syndicate opened their Bandini industrial tract. (Three years later, the street would become home to Bandini Fertilizer, a brand that still exists.) It doesn’t appear that any of Arcadia Bandini de Baker’s heirs were in that syndicate – she had no kids of her own – but San Pedro’s John T. Gaffey, husband of her namesake niece, controlled the family’s continued interests in the land.
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