Named in 1886 by Cordelia A. Boynton (née Clark, 1838-1919) after her hometown of Worcester, MA. (She actually grew up in the adjoining town of Auburn.) She and her machinist husband Edwin N. Boynton (1833-1886) moved to Pasadena in 1885 and purchased five acres between Marengo and Euclid and between Holly and Ramona; in fact it’s believed that Mrs. Boynton herself named Ramona Street, inspired by the 1884 bestseller Ramona. She’s also credited with laying out Worcester Ave. after her husband’s death, mere months after they settled here. (It was a trying time: the Boyntons had recently lost two of their three children – a son to typhoid in 1881, a daughter to tuberculosis in 1883.) You’ll note that Worcester Ave. and Ramona Street don’t intersect today. Worcester actually stretched all the way down to Colorado Blvd. until 1920, when for convoluted reasons City Council voted to change its portion south of Parke to Garfield Ave.
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