Culver City founder Harry Hazel Culver (1880-1946) lived a storied life. Born and raised in Milford, NE, Culver, who hailed from a military family, served as a bugler during the Spanish–American War, rode from Nebraska to New York on bicycle, worked in the Philippines for three years, and got married – all before turning 25. He got into real estate in Omaha in 1908; three years later, he moved to Los Angeles to work for Isaac Van Nuys. After Van Nuys’s death in 1912, the baby-faced Culver set up his own company and aggressively bought and sold vacant land between L.A. and Venice. He saved 93 acres for what would become Culver City, which he announced in 1913. Harry soon “went Hollywood”, divorcing his first wife Eunice and marrying aspiring actress Lillian Roberts (1896-1999, you read that right) while focused on bringing motion picture production to his new city, starting with the Triangle Film Corporation (see Ince Boulevard). The Culvers and their daughter Patricia later moved to Cheviot Hills, then to the Sunset Tower penthouse in West Hollywood. In a bizarre but true footnote, Harry and Lillian bought a small apartment building on Hayworth Avenue in the late 1930s, and Harry was present when The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald died there in 1940. As for this thoroughfare, it started out with two different names: Putnam Avenue and Del Rey Boulevard. Over the course of a very contentious two years (see Robertson Boulevard), Culver Boulevard was made official in 1927.
Find it on the map:
