The Bird Streets, the fabled celebrity nest above Sunset, was established in 1924 by developer Cooley Butler (1868-1965), whose brother Pierce was a Supreme Court Justice. Silent movie actor Eddie Lyons and his wife Virginia were investors, and Butler’s new wife LaRue Wallace Butler reportedly hatched the streets’ names, which alluded to their bird’s-eye views of the city: Bluebird, Bobolink, Flicker, Kinglet, Mockingbird, Nightingale, Oriole, Robin, Swallow, Tanager, Thrasher, Thrush, and Warbler. (Osprey, Peacock, Vireo, and Waxwing were planned but never materialized.) Blue Jay Way – the very street immortalized in a Beatles song – joined the flock in 1960, as did Skylark Lane in 1964. More recently, the former Pinto Place was rechristened Hummingbird Place in 2017 to capitalize on the Bird Streets pedigree. As for the Beatles’ “Blue Jay Way”, George Harrison was renting a house on Blue Jay Way in the summer of 1967. One foggy night, trying to stay awake while waiting for Beatles publicist Derek Taylor to arrive, Harrison wrote the song on a Hammond organ in the corner.
Find it on the map:
