Odin Street

Odin Street’s provenance is unclear. It was laid out on 1906’s Lockland Place tract, co-owned by Elizabeth K. Knudsen (1872-1942) and Josephine Carson Locke (1851-1919), who both came to Hollywood from Chicago around 1902. Knudsen was born in Hamburg, Germany and worked as a real estate broker here, while the Irish-born Locke was a renowned arts educator and lecturer who specialized in Japanese art. I presume the two women, who lived together on Highland Avenue, were a couple, but I can’t confirm it. Likewise, it’s impossible to say what inspired them to name this street. They were involved in fringe religions like Bahá’í and Theosophy, neither of which had much to do with Nordic myth, so “Odin” may have been the name of their pet – or perhaps it was meant to be “Nido” spelled backwards, nido being Spanish for “nest”.