Madison Park

Madison Park covers 309.2 acres and the county records 1,315 parcels and 1,301 site addresses inside the boundary, at a median distinct legal lot of 6,348 square feet. Twenty eight named streets run 11.52 miles within it, among them Borchard Ave, Griffith Pl, Hood Ave, Elder Ave, Halladay St, Hickory St and Kilson Dr. The zoning layer gives 169.6 acres to single family residence and 23.8 acres to two family residence, with 9.5 acres in the South Main Street Commercial District.

Madison Park itself sits inside the boundary at 6 acres, and the city records an all purpose field, a ball diamond, a basketball court, a community garden, a picnic area, a concession stand and a playground on it, with the Maple Occidental Exercise Park adding a pocket acre of fitness equipment and a trail. Fourteen properties inside the boundary sit on the city historic register. Madison Elementary sits inside the boundary and Santa Ana Unified covers all of it.

Madison Park is named for the park at its center, six acres at 1528 South Standard Avenue near Edinger, and for Madison Elementary on Hobart Street. The neighborhood sits in southeast Santa Ana on land that was once part of the big holding James McFadden bought when he came down from Salinas in 1868, and the oldest recorded subdivisions here were filed under the name McFadden Home Place. Robert McFadden followed his brother west, began selling plots off that land, and became Santa Ana's first real estate dealer. From the late 1880s the two of them ran the lumber business out of Newport that supplied the wood for a great many of the city's early houses, its bridges and its rail and dock work.

The street names remember the growers. George and Elizabeth Minter arrived in 1877 to farm, and George joined the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce and half the social clubs in town. Their youngest daughter Lula sat on the Bowers Museum's first board and served until she died in 1964. Minter Street runs through the neighborhood. The older cottages here date from the 1920s and most of the rest went up in the 1950s, which is why one block can look eighty years older than the next.