There might very well have been a barn wall around here long ago, but Barnwall Street originated in 1925 as Brentwood Street. By the 1940s, it and most of the other roadways on its Norwalk-based tract had been given new identities: Rosewood Street became Roseton Avenue, Alberto Street became Alburtis Avenue, Fernwood Drive became Ferina Street… You get the picture. (Only Excelsior Drive and Sylvanwood Avenue kept their birth names.) Someone obviously thought “Barnwall” looked close enough to “Brentwood” and there you have it. For what it’s worth, there were various L.A. folk named Barnwell at the time, so it’s possible that somebody had one of them in mind when renaming this street but wrote it down wrong.
Find it on the map:
