The 700 acre Ivanhoe tract was introduced on January 1st, 1887 by real estate brokers John C. Byram and Robert W. Poindexter (whose daughter is the namesake of Hollywood’s Romaine Street). I assume it was they who themed the tract and its streets after the works of Scottish author Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), chiefly his 1819 novel Ivanhoe. Ironically, Ivanhoe Drive itself wasn’t on that tract – it was added in 1922 – but Armstrong, Avenel, Ettrick, Kenilworth, Rokeby, Rowena, Scotland (of course), St George, and Waverly certainly were. The land itself was previously owned by the infamous Griffith J. Griffith, who sold it to Moses L. Wicks and Howard W. Mills, who then sold it to Byram and a number of investors (including Wicks’s brother Moye) mere weeks before the Ivanhoe tract was announced. From the Debunking Dept.: The story that Santa Anita settler Hugo Reid dubbed this area “Ivanhoe Canyon” in the 1830s because it reminded him of the “rolling green hills” of his native Scotland is patently untrue: Reid owned no property here and likely never even saw these hills; moreover, Walter Scott set Ivanhoe in England.
Find it on the map:
