Cuarta is the Spanish feminine translation of “fourth”, in this case referring to cuarta calle: “fourth street”. So was La Cuarta Street originally known as 4th Street? Yes it was – and as another street as well. 4th Street was laid out in 1891 on the East Whittier subdivision. (The folks behind East Whittier were not the original Whittier Quakers but a group of Michiganders: see Michigan Avenue.) La Cuarta Street was named fifty years later on the Friendly Hills tract and was meant as an extension of 4th Street – the Friendly Hills developers tweaked the name to conform to their other Spanish-themed avenues, e.g., Enramada. Meanwhile, if we go back in time to 1887, the western stretch of La Cuarta was christened Short Street on the original Whittier townsite. Both Short Street and 4th Street kept their birthnames until 1966, when the entire thoroughfare became La Cuarta. See 2nd Street for the tortuous history of East Whittier’s ordinal streets.
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