This started out as Records Street – not sure why the “s” vanished – named for Edward Records (1861-1913), who in 1887-1888 owned land here with Henry T. Hazard and Clarence J. Richards. (The upper portion of Bonnie Beach Place was originally called Richards Street.) Born in New Jersey and raised in Philadelphia, Records moved to L.A. in 1886 and got into real estate and railroad development while cofounding the Los Angeles Daily Tribune. His first wife Helen died at Pasadena’s Raymond Hotel in March 1888; within a year, Records left L.A. for New York with little Edward Jr. in tow. He married again, was widowed again, and had wed once more by 1902, when he and his third wife Bertha were living in San Francisco. The Great Earthquake of 1906 then forced them to move to Oakland. Although Records kept busy with his railroad and irrigation projects in Central California, he and Bertha were repeatedly harassed by Bertha’s mentally ill sister Alvina, who committed suicide in Chattanooga in 1911. Bertha, mourning her late husband and struggling financially, chose the same sad fate on New Year’s Day 1915. Their six-year-old son Frederic was later adopted.
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