At The LA Local, we’ve been taking the temperature of longtime residents on a variety of issues. But there’s one where we asked them to spell it out for us: Is it Pico Union or Pico-Union?
Some streets in the area, which for decades has been shaped by immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and elsewhere, feature colorful, vibrant logos with the hyphenated version of the neighborhood’s name. Google Maps and Apple Maps use the hyphen, too, but longtime community groups like the Pico Union Neighborhood Council and the Pico Union Project avoid it. So who’s right?
We asked residents to spell it out for us.
The Pro-Hyphen Camp:
Both the Department of Transportation and the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit that gives architectural tours across the city, use the hyphen, taking their cue from the city’s Planning Department. The Los Angeles Times Neighborhood Boundaries Map, a project that meticulously breaks down the city, also uses the hyphen.
According to the Los Angeles City Historical Society, the name should be hyphenated since it marks the connection of the neighborhood’s two main roads; hyphens act as connectors for compound words.
“The official designation for the neighborhood is Pico-Union, with a hyphen, because it’s named for the juncture of Pico Boulevard and Union Avenue. City documents refer to it that way, including the Pico-Union Historic Preservation Overlay Zone,” said Danny Jensen, a programs chair for the historical society.
Pico Boulevard is named after Pío de Jesús Pico, the last governor of California when the land belonged to Mexico. Union Avenue, which crosses Pico, helped give the area its identity, and there’s a theory that it was named ahead of the U.S. Centennial in 1876.
The neighborhood name, Pico‑Union, was officially adopted by the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency in 1970, and the area was later designated a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ) in 2004.
But these days, people who live and work in the community every day don’t seem to use the hyphen. And for now, anyway, that’s what we’ll do at The LA Local as we aim to deliver news that’s for and by the community.
The No-Hyphen Camp:
“For me, Pico Union is written without a dash. I think that is the original name, but that’s just my opinion,” said Carlos Rosales, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1995 and runs his family’s trophies and printing shop, JLC Awards, on Venice Boulevard and Union Avenue. “I always write it without a dash.”
“Pico Union is fine,” said Jay Park, the president of the Pico Union Neighborhood Council. “We don’t have to put any hyphen because Pico Union stands for Pico Boulevard and Union Avenue. Those are the main streets, so we don’t have to put a hyphen.”
Steven Kirby, a young adult librarian at the LA Public Library’s Pico Union Branch, agrees.
“As far as I know, there is no dash, it’s Pico Union. That is the name of the neighborhood. Usually, a dash is there to delineate from two separate words to make sure that they’re together, but I don’t think it’s necessary for Pico Union,” he said. “Pico Union are just used together, they don’t need something to combine them.”
What do you think? Respond in the comments, and we might just change the way we spell Pico Union.
