The Reseda neighborhood was born in 1911 as the town of Marian, named after Marian Otis Chandler (1866-1952), whose father Harrison Gray Otis and husband Harry Chandler were subdividing the lower half of the Valley at the time. (She was third in charge at the Los Angeles Times, behind only Otis and Chandler themselves.) Eleven years later, Marian’s residents wanted their own post office, only to learn that “Marian” was already registered elsewhere. (The U.S. Post Office strictly controlled such things back then.) And so they borrowed the name from Reseda Avenue (now Boulevard), laid out in 1910 by Otis, Chandler, et al. So who coined “Reseda” in the first place – and why? You’ll have to ask the ghosts of the Southern Pacific Railroad: they erected a little station here called “Reseda” in 1893 or 1894. While the nomenclature of the SPRR’s old stations is maddeningly opaque (see also: Raymer Street), reseda was a popular fabric color for Gilded Age ladies – sort of a light olive green. (Reseda odorata is the Latin name for mignonette, a fragrant flower whose verdant stems may have inspired the color.) One could argue that the Southern Pacific chose such a lush, fashionable name to convince Angelenos that the SFV was not a barren wasteland.
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