What’s a street called East Boulevard doing in West Los Angeles? You have to go back to 1911 for the answer, when the oval-shaped tract #928, initially dubbed Palm Place, was laid out: you had West Boulevard on the western side of the oval and East Boulevard on the eastern side. An obvious relationship… if West Boulevard hadn’t been renamed Marcasel Avenue in 1946! Lillian Charnock Price Smead was the tract’s original owner – her uncle John J. Charnock had deeded her the land before he died – but she soon sold it to Robert Pierce Sherman, the ever-disappointing stepson of real estate giant Moses Hazeltine Sherman (of Sherman Oaks fame). He got nowhere with Palm Place, so other developers bought the tract in 1920 and rebooted it as the more successful Marshall Manor. Today the neighborhood is known as the Oval District.
Find it on the map:
