The Westchester neighborhood derives its name from “West Manchester”, as in Manchester Avenue. This land, the former Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela, was owned by a group of capitalists called the Los Angeles Extension Company from 1912 until 1939, when the bank foreclosed on the property. Four developers soon snapped up these four square miles of farmland, each setting up a residential tract at Manchester and Sepulveda. Northeast of the intersection, Silas Nowell’s Westport Heights was the first to be announced, in 1940. (See Naylor Ave. for some dirt on Nowell.) Northwest was Frank H. Ayres & Son’s Kentwood, announced in 1941. Southwest was Bert Farrar’s Farrar Manor, also 1941. And southeast of the intersection, in February 1942, Fred Marlow and Fritz Burns, the men behind Windsor Hills (see Marburn Ave.), began promoting their Marlow-Burns tract. That’s also when the name “Westchester” was introduced, though it’s not known who coined it. As for Westchester Parkway, it didn’t come along until decades later: 1982, to be precise.
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