Does Tyrone Avenue honor actor Tyrone Power? Maybe – but not the one you’re thinking of. This street started out as Van Ness Avenue; after Los Angeles annexed the Valley in 1915, it had to be renamed to avoid conflicts with L.A.’s existing Van Ness Avenue. It was thus rechristened Tyrone Avenue by city ordinance in August 1917. Although it’s unknown who coined the new name, the only Tyrone in city directories back then was Tyrone Power – Senior (1869-1931). A London-born stage actor, Power was one of America’s most popular and respected performers by the time he made his first silent film in New York in 1914. We know he was addressed in Santa Monica in 1917 and in Hollywood in 1918 but the itinerant life of the thespian soon led Power elsewhere. He was, however, back in Tinseltown when a heart attack felled him in 1931. His son Tyrone Power (1914-1958) soon took to the silver screen and went on to even greater fame. All that said, the anonymous bureaucrat who coined Tyrone Avenue might have been inspired by County Tyrone, (Northern) Ireland, or by Tyrone, PA or Tyrone, NM, both of which were cited in local papers in 1917. But he would have known who Tyrone Power was. Everyone did.
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