Mentor Avenue
Southern California was full of homesick émigrés who often named towns and streets out here after their favorite places back home. It's another Street Story.
Mentor Avenue is a one-way street in downtown Pasadena.
Historian Sid Gally says it’s one of Pasadena’s oldest roads, "opened in 1886 by Ed Ferris and Dr. G Roscoe Thomas, both of whose wives were born at Mentor, Ohio."
Mentor, Ohio was the birthplace of an even more famous American: James Garfield, the President who was assassinated in 1881.
Garfield’s widow Lucretia hired a distant relative to build her a winter home in South Pasadena. The architect was Charles Greene of Greene and Greene fame.
The chalet style home still stands – though not on Mentor Avenue.
