Hub Street was originally called Boston Street. When the town of Garvanza was annexed by Los Angeles in 1899, the roadway’s name had to be changed to prevent conflicts with L.A.’s own Boston Street. Hub Street might seem like an arbitrary replacement, but someone from Massachusetts could tell you that one of Boston’s nicknames is indeed “The Hub”. The term originated in an 1858 essay that Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. had published in The Atlantic. In said essay, Holmes sardonically observed that “Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system.” It was a playful jab at Bostonian self-importance – Holmes himself was a native son – and as a result folks started calling Boston itself “The Hub of the Universe” and then simply “The Hub”.
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