“Institute” likely refers to a short-lived plan to build a Christian university here in 1906, when Rev. Phineas Franklin Bresee, founder of L.A.’s Church of the Nazarene, received a $30,000 donation from a Mr. and Mrs. Jackson Deets. The school, which first opened at 28th and San Pedro streets in 1902, was to be called the Deets Pacific Bible College, and the portion of Marathon Street due south of Institute Place was named College Drive. But the church never built that college here: Bresee sold the land in 1910 and established the school in Pasadena. (It ultimately moved to San Diego and is now Point Loma Nazarene University.) Curiously, although College Drive adopted Marathon’s name in 1912, Institute Place was christened in 1911, when there was no more talk of institutes here.
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