If you could drop into Torrance about a century ago, the streets might look familiar — but your map could leave you completely confused.

Several roads we use every day once had very different names.

Artesia Boulevard was Strawberry Street.

Sepulveda Boulevard was known as State Street, and at other times as Redondo Beach Street and Redondo Road.

And even Torrance Boulevard once carried names including El Prado and Redondo Beach Boulevard.

So what happened?

As Torrance and the surrounding South Bay grew, streets increasingly crossed city boundaries. Local officials wanted Torrance street names to match the roads they connected with elsewhere in Los Angeles County.

That led to a remarkable cleanup in 1932, when 25 Torrance streets were renamed in a single day.

Many east-west streets lost individual names and became numbered streets, following the county system. Old names such as Electric, Elgin, Fulton and Madera disappeared from the map.

Even First Street was renamed — becoming 235th Street.

Not every change happened quietly.

Strawberry Street held onto its name for almost another decade before eventually becoming Artesia Boulevard. One city official reportedly objected to naming Torrance streets after other communities, illustrating that street-name debates were apparently just as capable of generating opinions then as they are today.

There was even a spelling correction hidden among the changes.

Part of Gramercy Avenue had previously been spelled “Grammercy.” The city used the renaming process to standardize the spelling we recognize today.

The old street names offer a small window into how Torrance evolved from Jared Sidney Torrance’s planned industrial community into a city increasingly connected to the rest of the South Bay.

And the next time you’re sitting at a light on Artesia Boulevard, consider this:

You’re driving down what Torrance residents once knew as Strawberry Street.

Article Link: Read Torrance Library’s History of the City’s Street Names