Named in 1923 for attorney George Hobart Woodruff (1873-1944), who was developing the new town of Temple with his client Walter P. Temple (see Temple City Boulevard for a bio). Their partners Milton Kauffman and Sylvester Dupuy also received eponymous avenues, but Dupuy’s was quickly renamed Primrose. Back to George: a Connecticut boy, Woodruff went to Vashon Island, WA for college, then to Stanford for graduate studies. There he met Nellie Brittan (1875-1956), whom he wed in 1901 after coming to Whittier to take charge of a reform school. That gig didn’t last long, and after a couple of years as counsel for title insurance companies, Woodruff entered into private practice in 1907. He’d become Temple’s lawyer and friend by 1920. Along with Kauffman, they collaborated on numerous enterprises until the Great Depression drained Temple of his fortune. George and Nellie Woodruff had four children and lived in Pasadena.
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