After years of halfheartedly and, as it turns out, incorrectly positing that Sweetzer Avenue was (mis)named for Edward H. Sweetser (1844-1916), whose claim to fame was cofounding the Palms neighborhood in 1886, I can now confirm that it actually honors Marion Fish (1843-1926), whose maiden name was Sweetser. (She was a distant cousin of Edward’s.) Her husband Abner Crosby Fish (1835-1899) was the biggest investor in a stillborn 1888 development called “Cahuenga“, which gave us Sweetzer, Fountain, and Laurel avenues as well as a bunch of other streets that never materialized. Louisa Marion Sweetser hailed from Middlesex County, MA. She married Abner there in 1865 and within five years moved with him to Racine, WI, where he owned a wagon making concern with his brother and eventually became district attorney. The Fishes, who had three sons (a fourth died in infancy), lived in Los Angeles for just a few months during the city’s 1887-1888 real estate boom. When the boom went bust, they permanently relocated to Chicago. For the record, this street was correctly labeled “Sweetser Avenue” on the Cahuenga townsite map; when the street was finally laid out on terra firma in 1905, someone spelled it “Sweetzer” and here we are.
Find it on the map:
