This industrial street was named in 1923 for Edward Mumford Fowler (1877-1959), who at the time was planning a large cotton mill for this area. Fowler, whose father Dr. Edward Payson Fowler was a top New York physician, was born in Nice, France but grew up in Manhattan and Pelham Manor, NY. It was in the latter suburb where he became a real estate broker and married Beulah Fletcher Hull (1881-1960), a tobacco heiress from Detroit. They had one daughter, Helen. After a couple of years running a car dealership in Santa Barbara, Fowler and his family settled in Pasadena in 1913. Along with real estate, Fowler dabbled in all manner of capital pursuits, including the cotton biz. He cofounded the Los Angeles Cotton Mills company in 1923 with the intent of building mills, a dye house, and a bleachery here. Sheets and pillowcases were to be produced and ads promised jobs for 1,500 women and 700 men. The facilities were never built, the company folded within a year, yet roadways named for its founders remain, including Whiteside Street, Rogers Street, and (probably) Miller Avenue.
Find it on the map:
