It’s a myth that Talmadge Street honors silent screen actress Norma Talmadge (1894-1957). Some claim that when Vitagraph, the movie studio that made Talmadge famous, opened its lot on Prospect in 1915, its executives named the cross-street after their big star (who actually quit the studio that summer). But the truth is that a chunk of Hoover was renamed Talmadge in April 1911, while Vitagraph was still settling into its original West Coast digs in Santa Monica and Norma was just a teenage bit player in New York. In fact Talmadge Street was initially laid out – on paper, at least – back in 1887 on the Cumberland tract, which also gave us Clayton and Cumberland avenues. For reasons unknown, its original name didn’t resurface until L.A. city engineer Homer Hamlin made it happen 24 years later. The Cumberland tract was owned by Eugene George “E.G.” Northup (1847-1933), who was based in Northern California but briefly moved to Los Angeles at the peak of the 1887 real estate boom. Records show that he married one Hattie Talmadge (1852-1932) in Sacramento in 1873, so there you have it: this street was dedicated to Hattie. The Northups had four kids and wound up in San Jose, where E.G. owned a piano store. He also enjoyed regional fame as a gospel singer and even had a fly-by-night scheme promoting California via stereopticon.
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