Although many streets in this neighborhood take their names from the work of Sir Walter Scott (see Ivanhoe Drive), Herkimer isn’t one of them. In fact it started out as Howard Street on 1887’s Ivanhoe tract and was possibly inspired by Scott’s 1805 poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel, which made multiple references to Lord William Howard. City ordinance changed Howard to Herkimer in 1912 to avoid conflicts with another Howard Street that, ironically, no longer exists. (It’s now an LAPD parking lot near Cesar Chavez and Vignes.) My guess is that civil engineers went with “Herkimer” mainly because it started with an “H”, like “Howard”. They copied the name either from Herkimer County, NY or from Pasadena’s Herkimer Street – which itself was absorbed into Union Street in 1951.
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