French Park

French Park covers 80.9 acres and the county records 223 parcels and 215 site addresses inside the boundary, at a median distinct legal lot of 7,259 square feet. Fifteen named streets run 3.91 miles within it, Eighth through Twelfth Streets crossing French St, Spurgeon St, Minter St, Garfield St, Bush St and Wellington Ave. The zoning layer gives 31.4 acres to Specific Development No. 19 and 11.5 acres to the Midtown Specific Plan, and the city carries the boundary inside its Transit Zoning Code and its adaptive reuse overlay.

The city draws its French Park historic district across the boundary, and the historic properties register lists 97 properties inside it, 20 of them landmarks and 36 keyed, among them the Automobile Club of Southern California building and the Ayers, Axelson and Adkinson Houses. French Park itself is a pocket site of 0.2 acres. Santa Ana Unified covers the whole boundary, with Wallace R. Davis Elementary 0.08 miles away.

Eight years after William Spurgeon laid out Santa Ana, the town's businessmen started talking about expansion. In 1877 Spurgeon, J. H. Fruit and James McFadden formed the Western Development Company, talked the railroad into extending its line down from Anaheim, and by the time the track was laid in 1878 they had platted a 160 acre tract called Santa Ana East, set parallel to the rails and at an angle to the original townsite. The street that gave the neighborhood its name honors C. E. French and his family. French managed the Irvine Ranch and was responsible for the original Irvine family ranch house in 1876, served as Santa Ana's postmaster under four presidents, donated office space and a cabinet of books in 1878 to begin the Santa Ana Public Library Association, and in 1899 built the Grand Opera House block.

In the 1890s George Wright bought a triangular piece of the subdivision for his house. The house was later moved to the corner of Minter, then still G Street, and Vance Place, and the neighbors gave the vacated ground to the city for a park on the condition that French Street be opened to its full width. Because of its shape the wedge was called Flatiron Park, and it is French Park today. When Miles Crookshank built his ornate Neo-classical Revival house at 802 North French in 1899 it set the standard for the street, and under the live oaks the blocks filled with more Colonial Revival houses and with Craftsman bungalows until people were calling the area the Nob Hill of Orange County. By 1905 the north end was going up in superior versions of the bungalow, and in the late teens and twenties the last open lots took large Spanish style four-unit apartment buildings, several of which still stand on the 900 block of Lacy.