Holmby Avenue and Holmby Hills are named in memory of department store king Arthur Letts (1862-1923), who once owned this land. “Holmby” refers to Letts’s birthplace in Northamptonshire, UK: Holdenby. (19th century publications often referred to the village, and its nearby estate, as “Holmby”. Letts’s family owned a farm there for generations.) At 21, Letts left England for Toronto, where he learned the mercantile trade. He then spent some years in Seattle before coming to Los Angeles in 1896. Here he made his fortune, chiefly by reviving The Broadway department store and later bankrolling Bullock’s. A pillar of society known for his flamboyant fashion sense, Letts lived in a stately Los Feliz mansion dubbed “Holmby House” and used the Holmby name for his business interests and even his show dogs. In 1919, Letts bought the 3,296 acre Wolfskill Ranch; less than a year before his death, he sold the land to Harold Janss (his son-in-law) and Edwin Janss, who soon began developing it as Westwood. (The Holmby Corporation retained a stake.) Letts died in 1923 after a “nervous breakdown from overwork”; he was eulogized across the city. The Jansses named this neighborhood and street that very year.
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