Part of Penn Street was renamed York Avenue in 1966 as a posthumous thank you to philanthropist and businessman Victor Hugo York (1894-1963), who had lived at the corner of York Avenue and Mar Vista Street back when the intersection was called Plotts Drive and 6th Street. Vic York was a native Angeleno who wed Ruby Marie Moore (1895-1982), an Ohio transplant, in 1915. It was around this time that York got into the oil drilling business and also moved to Whittier, although he and Ruby would then spend some years abroad, chasing the oil wherever it was found. They returned to Whittier in 1923 and raised their four kids here. Generous with the wealth he’d acquired as an oilman, York became highly active in local organizations and charities – chief among them the Salvation Army – until the very end of his life. He also supplied the City with two plots of public land: Penn Park in 1940 and York Field in 1941.
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