Probably named for hapless real estate speculator Winfield Alberto “W.A.” Clinton (1850-1903). The son of a wealthy Philadelphia paintbrush manufacturer, Clinton first came to California in 1880. After a brief courtship, in 1881 he married Blanche Emilie Crowley (1862-1916), an Angeleno whose recently deceased grandfather was a French consul. She had inherited a bit of land in DTLA, so the Clintons – and Blanche’s mother Emma Philip – jumped into the 1880s real estate boom. But the boom went bust, and after some disastrous investments (including the purchase of a society newspaper called the Sunday Social World), by 1889 the trio was deeply in debt. So what did W.A. Clinton do? He ran away from Los Angeles, his debts, and his family. Blanche and her mother declared bankruptcy and Blanche understandably filed for divorce. (At the trial, it was reported that W.A. was a “confirmed absinthe fiend” who consumed 15-20 drinks a day.) The disgraced W.A. resettled back east, remarried, and died from a heart attack at 52. Blanche herself remarried three more times. As for Clinton Street, an 1884 map shows a plot of land owned by W.A. Clinton in present-day Silver Lake, but it’s unclear if he also had interests where Clinton Street originated, between Hoover and Vermont. That said, city officials stated in a 2000 Los Angeles Times article that W.A. Clinton did indeed name this street in 1887, so let’s go with that.
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