The land was the last of a 162-acre tract John Mason bought in 1865. Its developers, banker Alphonse Eli Wilder, Augustine Nicholson, Magnus Tait and orchardist John Bean, gave their names to its streets.
Many early civic figures lived there. John Bean developed an improved spray pump against San Jose scale in the neighborhood, and the business grew under his son-in-law David C. Crummey and grandson John Crummey into the Food Machinery Corporation (FMC).