There are false reports that Winnetka was named by chicken farmer Charles Weeks (1873-1964) in honor of his hometown of Winnetka, IL. Weeks was in fact from Swayzee, IN, and although he did indeed establish a poultry colony here on Winnetka Avenue in 1922, the street was named at least five years earlier, before he even came to Los Angeles. (It was first christened Walnut Avenue in 1910; it’s entirely possible that L.A. civil engineers renamed it Winnetka simply because both names started with “W”.) Weeks’s colony was originally called “Runnymede No. 2”, after his first Runnymede poultry colony in East Palo Alto, so at least we know he named Runnymede Street. Then quite rural, this neighborhood was alternatively known as Weeks Colony and Weeks Community until February 1935, when it was officially dubbed Winnetka, after the street. (Weeks and his family had shoved off to Florida by that point.) The original Winnetka, a cozy Chicago suburb, allegedly takes its name from a Native American term meaning “beautiful place”.
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