Lyric Avenue, Claremont Avenue, Entrance Drive, and Radio Street were all introduced on a 1922 tract owned by Mary Ann Griffith (1870-1960) and her brother Octavius Thomas Griffith (1875-1923). Any relation to Griffith Jenkins Griffith (1850-1919), donor of Griffith Park? Indeed – they were his half-siblings. Griffith came to Los Angeles in 1881 and bought Rancho Los Feliz the following year. His success encouraged his father, stepmother, and eight half-siblings to leave South Wales for L.A. in 1884. Four of those siblings never married and would live together for the rest of their lives, including Octavius and Mary, who surely inherited this parcel of land from Griffith. As for the four new streets on their tract, there’s no evidence that the Griffiths named them personally and no explanation for the monikers. I assume Entrance Drive is so called because it was the entrance to the tract off of Hyperion; little Radio Street, at the top of the hill, might have been envisioned as a spot for a radio tower (which to my knowledge never materialized); Claremont was possibly a nod to its “clear mountain” view. I have no theory about Lyric Avenue’s provenance, but I can tell you that Walt Disney once lived on the street.
Find it on the map:
