Stocker Street

Clara Baldwin Stocker (1847-1929) was Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin‘s oldest daughter. (See Santa Clara Street in Arcadia for her early life; see Anoakia Lane for half-sister Anita.) Baldwin purchased this land, the former Rancho Ciénega o Paso de la Tijera, in 1875, thus putting the “Baldwin” in Baldwin Hills. As for the “Stocker” in Stocker Street, it came from Clara’s fourth and final husband: light opera singer Harry Randolph Stocker (1857-1918), whom she married in 1882. Stocker, a Philadelphia native whose stage name was Stuart Harold, got into some trouble in 1900 when he shot a police officer in a San Francisco concert hall – yet the officer mysteriously “disappeared” and the charges were dropped. In 1913, four years after Lucky Baldwin’s death, his estate was finally settled and Clara and Anita shared a whopping $20 million inheritance, including some 4,000 acres of oil-rich Baldwin Hills land. (Lucky indeed!) Clara sold 231 acres of that land to developer Walter H. Leimert for $2 million in 1927. While laying out Leimert Park, he named Stocker Place and Stocker Plaza in her honor. Stocker Street branched out from there in 1928.