The name “Verdemour” doesn’t appear anywhere else in the world outside of this street, so I suspect it’s wordplay. Three families owned the 1923 tract that birthed Verdemour Avenue: Thomas and Sophie Hazelton, H.J. and Helen Perkins, and Nora, David, and Frederick McCartney. (Nora was the mom.) It’s possible that “Verdemour” was the name of one of their houses – folks liked to give their homes fancy titles back then, even if they weren’t grand estates. My best guess is that it’s a corruption of vers d’amour – “love poem” in French. (Ver d’amour means “worm of love”!) Or if the source was Spanish, it would be verde amor – “green love” – or ver de amor: “to see of love”. Clumsy, sure, but native English speakers of the day didn’t often fuss over literal translations, as long as the results sounded pretty.
Find it on the map:
