Originally just plain “L Street”, Louise Street almost certainly honors Mary Louise Brand (1871-1945), wife of Glendale godfather Leslie Coombs Brand (1859-1925). (A telling clue: Maryland Avenue, one block west, was originally Mary Street.) Born Mary Louise Dean in Galveston, TX, she and her four siblings lost their father Reuben when they were children. It’s said that she met L.C. Brand in 1891 during his Texas sojourn and that they eloped in Monterrey, Mexico that very year. The couple relocated to Los Angeles by 1896; as L.C.’s status rose, Mary Louise befriended Florence Wicks and formed a “ladies’ gun club” together. Once the Brands’ Glendale mansion Miradero was finished in 1904, Mary Louise lived there for the rest of her life, later joined by her sister Theresa. (The Brands had no children together, although L.C. secretly fathered two sons with another woman in the 1920s under the pseudonym “Lee Gordon”.) She was killed on Route 66 outside Williams, AZ while on a trip to Missouri to visit Brand relations.
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