Previously known as Gold Street, this was one of over 300 roadways renamed on February 26th, 1897 by city ordinance in an attempt to rid Los Angeles of duplicate and/or superfluous street names. The city’s renaming commission often sought to replace generic English monikers with colorful Spanish ones, but you’ll note that plata means “silver” in Spanish. That wasn’t a clever allusion to Silver Lake, as the reservoir itself wouldn’t be named until 1903. Oro is the proper Spanish word for “gold”, so why didn’t the commission call this “Oro Street”? Because L.A. already had an Oro Street, which itself had been renamed by a different city ordinance in 1889; it was previously called… Silver Street. (It’s now part of Lake Street.)
Find it on the map:
