On Ord and Hutton’s 1849 map of Los Angeles, this street was labeled “Calle de las Avispas – Hornet Street”. Avispa in Spanish actually means “wasp” – and English-speaking Angelenos indeed knew this as Wasp Street until February 1874, when a group of residents petitioned City Council to rename it Yale Street. In that same petition, they requested that Grasshopper Street be changed to Union Street (Council went with Pearl Street instead; it’s now part of Figueroa) and Bull Street changed to Castelar Street (it was, and so it remained until 1960, when it finally became North Hill). Wasp Street may have been named for the same reason that Grasshopper Street was: insects were a big problem in the wild young pueblo. But why “Yale” as its new moniker? Perhaps some property owner was a graduate of that hallowed university, although I found no Yalies amongst the people most associated with this neighborhood in the 1870s. At any rate, the name probably has nothing to do with adjacent College Street.
Find it on the map:
