The Wilshire-Fairfax tract was opened in 1923 by Hugh Evans and Harold Gale Ferguson on 285 acres they purchased from the estate of Samuel Rose Hancock, whose family once owned Rancho La Brea. (For more on the Hancocks, see Hancock Avenue.) Six new streets were introduced on this tract: Blackburn, Colgate, Drexel, and Lindenhurst avenues; Maryland Drive; and Orange Street. The latter might have been a nod to Wilshire Boulevard‘s old moniker. Blackburn, Colgate, and Drexel are all American universities, so I think that’s the connection. (For what it’s worth, the Hollywood-raised Ferguson was a Stanford grad; Evans, an Englishman who later ran a nursery with Jack Reeves, didn’t attend college.) I’m less sure about the source for Maryland Drive – there is a University of Maryland, but it could be a tribute to the state itself – and even iffier about Lindenhurst Avenue’s origins. Since there are no schools called Lindenhurst, the street might have been inspired by a village on Long Island, or else someone just pulled the name out of a hat.
Find it on the map:
