The Marathon tract and its titular street were laid out in December 1886 west of Alvarado. I couldn’t find any story behind the Marathon name; maybe the tract’s developers just thought it sounded cool. Said developers included August Julius Stamm (1849-1936), a German pianist/conductor who came to L.A. in 1885 to be the organist at St. Vibiana’s and later founded a precursor to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Another Marathon man was Frank B. Fanning (c. 1836-1892), chief deputy clerk for L.A. County and an amateur opera singer; he was friends with Stamm and was also close to the Banning family. But the tract’s primary owner was Solomon Hubbard (c. 1830-1900). Born in North Carolina, Hubbard grew up in the Midwest. He and his second wife Ella (1848-1936) married in Cedar Falls, Iowa (near Waterloo) shortly before moving to SoCal in 1883. They dabbled in real estate while living on an Azusa orange grove. The Marathon tract originally had Hubbard and Fanning streets – they’re now Coronado Terrace and Benton Way, respectively. Showbiz postscript: Marathon Street used to extend to the iconic front gate of Paramount Pictures, but that section was converted into a private concourse during the studio’s 1993 expansion.
Find it on the map:
