All my life I've wondered: Why does Watson Street become Avondale Drive at Virginia Avenue. As I grew older, I became even more curious as to where Watson Street ended and Avondale began. Well, recently I found my answer. In the process, I also learned something that had long since been forgotten about that area.
Did you know that neighborhood actually has...or once had...a name? Carolina Avenue, College Avenue, Stratford Place, and Avondale Drive were called Avondale Park during their development in the 1920's and 1930's. But to explain how I learned this, and the origins of Avondale Drive, we have to jump back to the year 2005.
In the Summer of 2005, my best friend and I went to City Hall to see what we could find out about the house. We went to the records office where a few years early my best friend had a summer internship. Our efforts were fruitful, but only marginally. We were presented with a building permit from 1924, and a map of the lot. The map was titled "Avondale Park. Revised Map of the Property of J.E. Perkinson."
Flash forward six years. Using my mother's Ancestry.com account, I was able to access The Danville Register and the Danville Bee archives as far back as 1922, some of which documented the development of the area. Some of the articles mentioned the extension of Watson Street, which was to be called Avondale Drive.
The exact location of the change, however, was not known to me until this past fall. I learned about old maps by the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company which show road names, propety lines, and more importantly to my research: houses. The maps are drawn to a scale of 1 inch to 100 feet. The 1915 and 1920 maps of Danville both show the terminus of Watson Street at the intersection with Virginia Avenue. Thus, Avondale Drive begins just past Virginia Avenue. I would include a screenshot of the map, but I'm currently trying to decipher the copyrighting on the digital collection.
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