You see “Huxley” and think of English writer Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) – and he was indeed a published author (though not yet an Angeleno) when Huxley Street was named in late 1925. But with Brave New World seven years away, Huxley’s grandfather Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), an evolutionary biologist, was still the best-known Huxley at that time. Streets in the Los Feliz Hills tract were routinely given British monikers – surely guided by English American landowner William Mead (see Hillhurst Avenue) – so “Huxley” may simply allude to the village of Huxley in Cheshire, UK. But that village is so tiny that I doubt Mead knew of it, and since this street was laid out mere months after the Scopes Monkey Trial, which often referenced Thomas Huxley’s role in the creation vs. evolution debate, I feel he’s the namesake. At least one of the Los Feliz Hills developers, Godfrey Edwards, was an intellectual and a Unitarian Universalist, so Huxley Street might have been his subtle tribute to the pro-evolution cause.
Find it on the map:
