Throughout Southern California – indeed, across all of America – you will find streets named after Euclid, the ancient Greek mathematician. The only one within Los Angeles city limits is this one, named (as Euclid Street) in 1885. It’s been theorized that this nationwide homage to Euclid was an inside joke among old city surveyors, who studied his treatise Elements in school and applied his geometric principles to the grid-like neighborhoods they laid out, with arrow-straight streets and intersections at right angles. (This rationalist approach to urban planning was a new and very American idea in the early 19th century, as espoused by Thomas Jefferson.) In some cases, as in Santa Monica’s Euclid Street and Pasadena’s Euclid Avenue, there were more direct inspirations: a city councilman for the former, a famous Cleveland thoroughfare for the latter.
Find it on the map:
