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Phoenix street names: Who was Lynn and why was she so cheery?

Clay Thompson
The Republic | azcentral.com
A home located in the  Cheery Lynn neighborhood.

I live near a street named Cheery Lynn. Who was Lynn and why was she so cheery?

I actually put some time in on this one and it appears there never was a Lynn who was especially cheery, or at least not a Lynn who was so cheery that a street and neighborhood were named for her. Or, if there was, I couldn't find anybody who knew about it.

The Cheery Lynn neighborhood in central Phoenix is bounded by 16th Street and Osborn, Thomas and Randolph roads.

It was developed in the 1920s when the automobile was weakening Phoenicians' reliance on Central Avenue streetcars to move out of the downtown.

The developer William Fosburg and builder Marion Carr put up 29 homes in the Tudor and Elizabethan revival styles that had been popularized at the Chicago World's Fair in 1892.

The first newspaper ads invited people "to drive on out" to see "the Most Distinctive Subdivision in the Southwest."

They touted the houses' designs, basements, paved streets, indoor plumbing, sidewalks and streetlights. The new Arizona Biltmore Resort was another attraction out there in the country.

As for the name, I think it was just something the developers made up. Cheery, of course, means of good disposition (like me) and Lynn is an old Anglo-Welsh word for a small lake or waterfall.

E-mail Clay at clay.thompson@ arizonarepublic.com.