In July 1927, it was announced that the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company would build a $7 million tire factory – its first outside of Akron, OH – on a 40 acre lot on Manchester Avenue between Alameda and Santa Fe. Just one month later, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to change the name of Manchester (that is, its portion east of Alameda) to Firestone Boulevard. The Firestone name rolled over another mile and a half of Manchester, all the way up to Central Avenue, in 1929. The Firestone plant’s groundbreaking ceremony was held in December 1927 – Russell Firestone, son of company founder Harvey S. Firestone, dug the first shovelful of dirt – and the plant itself opened almost exactly one year later. (Their rival Goodrich beat them to the punch.) Firestone shut it down in 1980 and the site has been in limbo ever since, with only one original building remaining.
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