Yes, it’s named after Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), and yes, neighboring Waterview Street was originally called Waterloo Avenue. But why? The answer lies way back in 1887, when ubiquitous developer Moses L. Wicks established a tract here filled with street names relevant to Bonaparte. The others, now lost: Marengo and Moscow, which like Waterloo remembered famous Napoleonic battles, and Ney and Wellington, which honored Bonaparte’s marshal Michel Ney and his enemy the Duke of Wellington. The tract never materialized, thanks to the real estate crash of 1888, but the street names were revived in 1911 in an entirely different layout. Some were rechristened by city ordinance in 1938; Moscow became Sandpiper in 1954 in the heat of anti-Soviet fervor; most became “ghost streets” after the Surfridge neighborhood was condemned and fenced off due to LAX noise and safety concerns. Only Napoleon and Waterloo – I mean Waterview – remain.
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