Not sure why the “s” vanished, but this started out as Records Street, named for Edward Records (1861-1913), who owned land out here in 1887-1888 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 came to L.A. in 1886 and jumped 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, and it appears that Records took their son Edward Jr. to New York within a year. 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 1906 earthquake forced them to move to Oakland, where although Records kept busy with his railroad and irrigation projects in Central California, the couple was repeatedly harassed by Bertha’s mentally ill sister Alvina, who committed suicide in Chattanooga in 1911. Bertha herself would follow suit on New Year’s Day 1915, despondent over Edward’s death just over a year earlier. Their 5-year-old son Frederick was left an orphan.
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