Letters to Voices : Angels Flight, Bunker Hill

In your article on Angels Flight (Public Places, Jan. 20), an assertion was made that the fort must have had a bunker. Maybe so, but that is not the reason for the name Bunker Hill.

In 1867 businessman Prudent Beaudry paid $517 at a sheriff’s auction to buy some acres on the hill just west of Broadway. He piped water up to it in 1875 and developed the land into a residential community. The year 1875 was the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, so Beaudry named his subdivision accordingly. It became a tony neighborhood of houses and mansion overlooking the busy and changing scene below. Big shots like the Crockers and the Bradburys built mansions there.

ROBERT D. HERMAN

(The author is a professor of sociology at Pomona College in Claremont)