Southern California has lots of streets named for Euclid, the ancient Greek mathematician. Some say it was an inside joke among old city surveyors, who studied Euclid’s 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, the name had other inspirations.
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