The block was named after the 1884 novel Ramona. Pedro Joseph de Lemos built its first building, the Gotham Shop, in 1925 around a very old oak, and Birge Clark and W. H. Weeks added to its Spanish style with archways, tile roofs and courtyards.
Clark’s Medico-Dental Building of 1928 and Weeks’s Cardinal Hotel stand at Hamilton Avenue. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.