L.A. by Any Other Name : One Man Crusades to Bring Back Neighborhoods’ Nostalgic Titles

The map at Gregory J. Fischer’s house in University Entrance Park is carefully marked with tiny red flags naming each of the adjoining Los Angeles neighborhoods.

Next door is Prosperity. Over there is Country Club. To the west is Streets of Monterey. On the southeast are Foxhills One and Two and Little Holmby.

Everyone else may know the place as Westwood. But Fischer has a more down-home view of his community--and of hundreds of others in Los Angeles.

That explains why he’s on a crusade to resurrect long-forgotten subdivision names for every nook and cranny of the city. The names would return some individuality to neighborhoods, says Fischer. And they’ll do the same thing to residents.

“When you live in a city the size of L.A. you lose your sense of place,” he says. “You basically feel like you don’t count. Everybody catches it--it’s like a virus.”

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The neighborhood names campaign is drawing support from Mayor Richard Riordan and several City Council members. It is also being endorsed by mid-city residents whose 87-year-old Victoria Park neighborhood has become Exhibit A in the crusade.

The idea has also earned high marks from an expert on Los Angeles neighborhoods--a USC urban studies director who feels there is gold to be mined in subdivision histories if residents are willing to dig for it.

According to Fischer, even such well-established pockets of town as Hollywood and Silver Lake are too big and diverse for residents to relate to on a personal level.

Hollywood alone is home to dozens of decades-old subdivisions. The Silver Lake area is made up of neighborhoods originally built with such names as Ivanhoe Hills, Manzanita Heights, Primrose Hill, Sunset Heights, Capitol Hill, Childs Heights and Crestmont--the tract that advertised itself 70 years ago as “the Smiley Heights of Los Angeles.”

Even the sometimes-maligned--and loosely defined--South-Central Los Angeles area is composed of neighborhoods with long-forgotten names like Palomar Park, Corinth Heights and Goodyear Park.

“These days you ask someone where they live and they’re likely to say ‘Vermont and Florence.’ Identifying where you live by intersections is pathetic,” says Fischer. “To tell someone you live at Pico and Venice isn’t very interesting.”

Of course, some well-known neighborhood identities have sprung directly from intersections.

The Pico-Union near Downtown has “taken on its own character--people even forget there is such an intersection,” said Robert Pierson, urban studies program director at USC and author of a walker’s guide to several Los Angeles-area neighborhoods.

“What he’s doing is marvelous,” Pierson said of Fischer’s idea. “One of the problems of Los Angeles is few people understand its network of neighborhoods. He’s right on target.”

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Some areas, such as Koreatown and Little Tokyo have adopted new names to reflect the changing character of neighborhoods, Pierson said. But residents elsewhere could find that their area’s original tract name still suits the place just fine.

Picked by developers as selling tools, many of the old subdivision names are whimsical. Others are puzzling. Many are more romantic sounding than the area they represent. Most describe newly emerging subdivisions in the most colorful and enthusiastic terms, Fischer discovered.

Some San Fernando Valley tracts are named after developers. Moss Park, at Tujunga and Oxnard streets in North Hollywood, featured houses built by Joel Moss. Girard, now called Woodland Hills, was initially subdivided by builder Victor Girard.

“But some, like Glen Airy Place off Jefferson near Crenshaw don’t seem to have any meaning,” Fischer said.

As it is today, convenient access to newly developing neighborhoods was an important selling point during the first part of the century.

The 240-lot Melrose Park subdivision, described in its advertisements as “the choicest bungalow property in South Hollywood,” boasted that it was “bounded by three main thoroughfares”--Melrose and Highland avenues and La Brea Boulevard.

Wilshire Highlands, marked by Cahuenga Boulevard on the west, Pico Boulevard on the south and 12th Street on the north, did something that residential areas don’t do today: It bragged of its proximity to a subway line.

“Note the location of the Pacific Electric Subway right-of-way. One double-track electric car line from the proposed subway runs lengthwise through Wilshire Highlands. Imagine the tremendous effect on the values of Wilshire Highlands lots of such quick and convenient transportation!”

Fischer, a research consultant who works for a Westside real estate company, says the 1992 riots were a catalyst in his campaign.

Los Angeles residents need to feel that they have more of a personal stake in their community, he decided after the smoke cleared.

In mid-1993 he wrote mayor-elect Riordan suggesting that the crisis in confidence that Los Angeles was experiencing might best be tackled at the neighborhood level. Riordan was so taken by the letter that he quoted from it and mentioned Fischer by name in his inaugural speech.

Since then, Fischer, 42, has spent hundreds of hours poring over library microfilms in search of newspaper advertisements dating from the early 1900s.

Some of the city’s subdivisions are only a block long. Larger ones cover a square mile or more. Fischer said most tract names survived for only a generation or two after developers sold the houses and moved on.

Wealthier enclaves have kept their subdivision identities, however. Names such as Hancock Park have allure that cause adjoining neighborhoods to want to join up. “If ‘Hancock Park’ grows any larger, it will reach all the way to Downtown,” Fischer joked.

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In Fischer’s view, neighborhood names can be revived at little cost to the city. Residents can check old city archives and newspaper microfilm to learn about their subdivisions and then produce inexpensive signs for their streets.

As proof, he devised a stylized “Victoria Park” logo and had it printed on a steel sign for $150. His research turned up the names of the subdivision’s developers and the fact that its unusual oval street layout was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, a landscape architect best known as the designer of New York’s Central Park.

“The idea, obviously, is not to impose anything on people,” Fischer said. “You couldn’t sustain that even if you wanted to. The idea is not to turn it into a history project either. It’s just to give a sense of neighborhood pride.

“There isn’t one neighborhood in this city that can’t use something--better drainage, improved street lights, a homeowners association.”

Victoria Park resident Jerry Mendelsohn agrees.

“All over the city there are wonderful little pockets. There are many neighborhoods around L.A. that have their own kind of uniqueness,” said Mendelsohn, whose neighbors stage annual July 4th parties and Christmas progressive dinners and are hoping to install “Victoria Park” signs.

Riordan will support residents of any area who ask for permission to erect such signs, said Tom LaBonge, director of field operations for the mayor.

“It takes individuals to create neighborhood identification and say, ‘This is where I live and I’m proud of it,’ ” LaBonge said.

“The more active a neighborhood, the more success they’ll have in not only enjoying where they live but in influencing city leaders.”

Councilman Nate Holden, who represents the Victoria Park area, likes the idea, too.

“You’re basically empowering yourself by identifying yourself,” said Deron Williams, a deputy to Holden. “There’s a lot of history in these neighborhoods and people should know it.”

Fischer, meantime, is continuing his research into subdivision names. His favorite haunt these days is the UCLA library, a few blocks from his home in Westwood’s old University Entrance Park subdivision. He outlines each tract he finds on his five-foot wall map.

“When I went to Thomas Bros. to get it, the lady there almost went apoplectic when I told her what I was going to use it for, that I wanted to see all these old subdivision names used again,” he laughed.

“I have hundreds of subdivisions to go. I haven’t even gone near the Valley yet. I haven’t touched Highland Park or Mt. Washington.”

Fischer has his work mapped out for him.