Via Marisol would revert back to Hermon Avenue under a neighborhood council proposal.
Hermon - It's been more than four decades since Hermon Avenue was replaced in favor of Via Marisol, named after some long-ago city councilman’s kid. But now there's a move in support of another name change, back to Hermon Avenue.
The Hermon Neighborhood Council allocated up to $5,000 at its last meeting to try changing the name of Via Marisol back to Hermon Avenue, at least along the half-mile stretch that runs within the neighborhood (Via Marisol continues into the adjacent Monterey Hills neighborhood). The money would cover all application costs, if there are any, said Lee Turner, the new Chair of the Hermon Neighborhood Council.
“I love my neighborhood and feel strongly that restoring the name of Hermon Avenue would return a precious community identifier and help us continue to increase Hermon's recognition and sense of neighborhood identity,” said Turner.
The L.A. City Council would ultimately have to approve the name change.
“We are still in the very early stages of this effort,” Turner said, “though the idea has been in Hermon since the original name change in 1978.”
That was the year City Councilman Arthur Snyder, a four-term representative and a large personality in this city’s history, got the street named after his three-year-old daughter, Erin Marisol, according to KCET.
Until then, the street, like the neighborhood, was named after Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights, a mountain cluster, on the border between Syria and Lebanon, that makes several appearance in the Bible. The name was a legacy of the Free Methodists who had founded the community in 1903.
Snyder reasoned that other street names in the neighborhood - as well as the architecture - were Spanish. So the name Hermon “would have a jarring influence on the theme.”
Via Marisol or Hermon Avenue?
Local residents disagreed. But, as the Los Angeles Times noted in 2003, “There were only about 2,500 of them at the time and their tiny number didn't carry much weight at City Hall.”
When residents convinced Caltrans to at least add the neighborhood name near Via Marisol exit sign off the Arroyo Seco Parkway, the name was misspelled as “Herman,” said the Times.
Snyder left the City Council in 1985, became a City Hall lobbyist, was eventually convicted of campaign finance violations in 1996, and later went into the restaurant business. He died in 2012.
It’s not clear whatever happened to his daughter, Erin-Marisol, but she would be in her mid-40s at this point.
In the meantime, Hermon is still stuck with the street name.
“Our goal would be for the name restoration to coincide with the completion of the City's major renovation of the street and sidewalks of that stretch of the avenue,” Turner said, “which is currently scheduled for completion by the middle of 2022.”
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I remember learning about Via Marisol back when I explored Monterey Hills for California Fool's Gold (https://ericbrightwell.com/2013/12/12/running-up-that-hill-exploring-monterey-hills-at-the-amoeblog/). Snyder said that having a street named Hermon in a predominantly Latino neighborhood was "jarring." I wonder whether anyone at the time was convinced by this "logic" -- as if every predominantly-Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles wasn't traversed with Anglo-named streets. Did he ever admit that it was really named after his jarringly Anglo-Latino named daughter (Erin-Marisol Snyder)?
Yeah, save the money and spend it somewhere else that's more needed. I moved to hermon 10 years ago, and I like the street name Via Mirasol.
Maybe a dumb question but what happens with regards to the residents' addresses? Who has to tell the various County deparments, DWP, the City, the USPS, the innumerable places of public and business record that would now have your address wrong? Seems like it could be a real PITA for those of us who actually live on that street.
I love the street name of Via Marisol, it lends an enchanting Mediterranean note to that stretch of the east side where far too many flat-footed 19th Century religious references reside. I once took the exit just to see where it led and was delighted to find winding tree-lined streets and Spanish style architecture that delivered on the promise of such a mellifluous place name. Please pin your
Hermon and your Herman elsewhere and leave Via Marisol alone. That City Councilman did you all a favor regardless of whatever else he ultimately left behind.
“It’s not clear whatever happened to his daughter, Erin-Marisol, but she would be in her mid-40s at this point.“ If she survived to her mid-40s, she’s probably still coping with what a disaster her parents were, as this 1985 LA Times story indicates: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-03-06-me-26290-story.html
WOW, that LA Times article! #timesupartsnyder
Herman has bigger problems like the TERRIBLE shopping center construction that was burned to the ground and rebuilt in exactly the same way, turning it's back to a busy intersection. Where was the Herman Neighborhood Council when this was being proposed? It's like the worst of 1980s strip mall architecture in 2020. Shame on Hermon and the people of Hermon for letting this monster be rebuilt.
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