Philip William Otterbein (1726-1813) was the founder of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. I’ll explain why his name anoints this street in a moment. First, a brief bio: Otterbein was born in Germany and came to the American colonies in 1752 as a Calvinist missionary. He wound up in Baltimore and organized the United Brethren there in 1800. Cut to 1911, when Bishop William Melvin Bell (1860-1933), then head of the church’s Pacific district, arranged the purchase of some twenty acres here for affordable homes for retired ministers. He named the community – and this street – after his church’s founder. Colonel Reuben Moore “R.M.” Baker (1834-1915), Monrovia banker and church member, sponsored the homes’ construction, and they retain his name to this day even though the property is now less than half its original size. (Its cash-strapped residents apparently sold off several acres in the 1970s.) William Bell would retire to Otterbein himself; his name lives on at the Bell Memorial United Methodist Church on nearby Nogales Street. (The United Brethren merged with the Methodists in 1968, hence “United Methodist”.)
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