The Hawthorne Historical Society’s informal timeline of our city’s story in the greater context of history from the last Ice Age to the present is playfully titled, “You Are Here,” [hawthornehistoricalsociety.
The names of locations-, the existence, names, and routes of streets-, the address numbers of buildings and delivery points- and the commonly-understood reference terms for places in our city have been altered by time into a patchwork of designations mysterious to the casual visitor – sometimes, even to experienced residents.
The first map of Hawthorne was probably produced in 1905 for Messrs Harding and Lombard to submit to Los Angeles County authorities to gain approval for their development of the 80-acre townsite (whose center is now covered by the defunct site and active remains of the Hawthorne Plaza shopping mall). Existing roads in the area were sometimes named for their origin and destination points, like “Inglewood-Redondo Boulevard” (now Aviation Boulevard). Some streets depicted on the map were probably prospective-, rather than actual routes designed to provide the necessary access to the proposed divisions of the property within the townsite and in some of the surrounding tracts in the County.
At the beginning, the actual streets of Hawthorne were graded and rolled dirt roads. The first paving in Hawthorne was applied in 1918 to the east-side lanes of Hawthorne Avenue between Raymond Avenue and Ballona Street (or -Avenue). This event illustrates the confusion that the changing cartography of the town and the changing designation of the streets were going to create for ages to come in the story of Hawthorne, and the difficulty it poses for historians attempting to fix locations of occurrences in our city’s past.
Hawthorne Boulevard was originally named Hawthorne Avenue within the city limits and was probably not re-designated until the 1930s.
Hawthorne Boulevard was divided into east-side lanes and west-side lanes by the rights-of-way and tracks of the Los Angeles Railway Co. (streetcar service, which ended at Broadway) and the Pacific Electric Railway (interurban service, which continued south on Hawthorne Boulevard and then angled west to the Redondo Beach shoreline).
All the streets in Hawthorne were named streets, with the exception of the six short north-south streets between 138th Street and 140th Street plus Ramona Avenue in the Ingledale Acres Tract (the southwest quadrant of the city). They were ordinally named, Second Street through Eighth Street, from east to west, with the current Ramona Avenue named Fifth Street. Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Streets were changed to conform with their counterparts (Ramona, Truro and Eucalyptus Avenues) in the northwest quadrant of the city sometime between 1932 and 1935 (Second, Third, Fourth and Eighth Streets were not renamed until the 1960s).
Soon afterward, between 1935 and 1938, the named east-west streets of Hawthorne were changed to numbered streets to conform with the plan adopted for the City of Los Angeles and continued in unincorporated parts of the County. The streets were designated with increasing numbers starting from the Los Angeles intersection of First Street and Main Street southward. Raymond Avenue in Hawthorne became 120th Street, but some important thoroughfares were spared. Broadway stayed Broadway, and Ballona Street – which had been renamed El Segundo Boulevard, probably after its namesake city was founded, around 1914, and before it appeared on an official map of Hawthorne in 1932 – remained El Segundo. Several explanations have been put forward for this change to numbered streets, all with cogent reasons for their acceptance. Mail was delivered from central Post Office locations in Los Angeles and an ever-widening network of sub-stations. Postal workers transporting mail to these sites had to cope with the names of through streets changing from the boundaries of one city or unincorporated area to the next. The same difficulty existed for agencies providing emergency services – law enforcement, fire and ambulance – where an easily understood route and fast arrival on scene were essential to a good outcome. The variation of street names posed the same problem for those planning for civil defense in the lead-up to America’s entry into the Second World War. In the event of an enemy attack or landing, they would have to quickly locate the sites, route a military defense and coordinate the response of emergency services to those places. And of course, conformity in street-naming made it easier for visitors to navigate the spreading landscape of Southern California.
The same justifications have been suggested for the change of the address numbers for all the buildings and delivery points in the City which was carried out in 1964. Sources even state that it was requested by concerned residents and businesses, though some of the parties cited above may have reaped the greatest benefit. Before the change, address numbers in Hawthorne increased in the four cardinal compass directions from the intersection of Hawthorne Boulevard and El Segundo Boulevard and each street name was appended with a corresponding compass direction: “North Ramona Avenue, East 120th Street, South Prairie Avenue, West Rosecrans Avenue” (commonly abbreviated).
Finally, Hawthorne did not spring as a full-grown, 6.1 square mile community out of the fields of Daniel Freeman’s ranch. It is an aggregate of many real properties developed at different times to different plans. As a consequence, we have many streets which do not extend squarely into their continuations across former city boundaries. For example, 131st Street, the former Creston Avenue in the Ingledale Acres Tract on the west side of Hawthorne Boulevard has no equivalent in the Burleigh Tract on the east side of Hawthorne Boulevard.
The present map of Hawthorne and its previous configurations are fertile ground for those who are interested in delving into our City’s story. The inconsistencies may be frustrating to those who want a definitive answer to the whereabouts of every incident in that story, but they are also the footprints and life paths of all of us who have called Hawthorne “home.” The evolving design of Hawthorne continues to be part of the unique character of this pleasant little place on the planet. Fortunately, you are here.