In 1888, Edward Graves, a real estate developer, hired Newby & Howell, Engineers and Surveyors of Washington, D.C. to survey his 393 acres, then known as the “Graves Subdivision”, for the new suburban residential development that was called Charlton Heights before its incorporation as the Town of Berwyn Heights in 1896. Fifty-foot wide streets were laid out, much as they remain today in Berwyn Heights.

Newby & Howell’s plat identified streets named for notable people of the time, including associates of Graves, James Waugh and the other developers of Charlton Heights. Ruatan Street was called Keleher Avenue, after Timothy D. Keleher, a U.S. Army Paymaster, who with Waugh, served as a Trustee of the Charlton Heights Investment and Building Association, that was incorporated in 1890.

For more information see the Keleher Brochure.