Realtor Martin Edwin Johnson (1873-1923) named this street on his 1906 Montecito Park tract after his wife Berenice (1874-1941), whose local popularity long outlasted their marital union. Berenice Ann Brown was born and raised in the Philadelphia area, the only child of Charles, a printer, and Margaret, who died in 1887. She first visited Los Angeles in the winter of 1899-1900 and was living here full-time within a year. She married Johnson, a Minnesota transplant, in February 1902; Dad moved in with them a few months later and in 1908 the trio set up house around the corner on Griffin Avenue. Johnson hit the road around 1917 and Berenice secured her divorce from him in 1920. If she shed any tears over the split, it wasn’t apparent: she was very active in social and civic affairs clubs and had friends and admirers all across the city. A public speaker, playwright, and humorist – one journalist summed her up as “a very witty talker” – Berenice Johnson died two years after her father, a resident of Griffin Ave. until the end.
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