Patch Blog History: Allesandro Street in Edendale

Allesandro ran through the bottom of the Edendale glen until the early 1920s.  A smaller street became Allesandro after big Allesandro became Glendale Boulevard.

A“glen” is a long narrow valley, and a “dale” is a broad lowland valley.  That is, ”Glendale” is an oxymoron.

 
I don’t know why Allesandro is spelled the way that it is.  How would that be pronounced -- Ah-YES-Andro?  Alessandro is an Italian name for Alexander, and it is also the name of the Indian protagonist in Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona and the name of her real-life model for the character.   (Errol Wayne Stevens, "Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona: Social Problem Novel as Tourist Guide," California History, vol 77, no. 3, Fall 1998)

The fictional character Ramona – and the Cahuilla woman who was the model for her -- is largely forgotten but her name and her husband's name are reiterated in street names (Ramona Boulevard, for example, in Baldwin Hills) and place names, e.g., Ramona Gardens in Boyle Heights, the Ramona Pageant in Hemet and the Alessandro Hotel in Hemet.  

Given the enormous popularity of the novel, Allesandro may be a misspelling of Ramona’s husband’s name (in fiction and in reality).

Hunt’s objective in writing her novel was to bring the plight of California’s Indians to national attention. It was to have other consequences instead.  (See, the Los Angeles History Project’s 1988 film “Ramona: a Story of Passion and Protest,” the 1910 silent “Ramona” starring Mary Pickford, the 1928 film starring Dolores del Rio, and the 1938 film starring Loretta Young as Ramona and Don Ameche as Alessandro.)  

The novel’s 1885 publication drew thousands of immigrants and tourists from the central and eastern states to Los Angeles, and it also led both to restoration of California’s dilapidated missions and to Mission Revival Style architecture. 

This style’s greatest flowering -- a rebirth of colonial Spanish architecture --was from 1890 to 1915.  Spanish architectural tradition reflected Moorish design.  (Moorish architecture is a term used to describe the Islamic architecture of North Africa and parts of Spain and Portugal where the Moors dominated from 711–1492. The best surviving examples are La Mezquita in Córdoba and the Alhambra palace)

William Selig rebuilt the Selig Polyscope studio on Allesandro (now Glendale Boulevard) in the Mission Revival Style.  Union Station downtown combines elements of Mission Revival with explicit references to Moorish architecture.

Allesandro's genesis in a romantic myth should be remembered.  What we have now along old Allesandro's route is the blighted Glendale Boulevard corridor.