When a bunch of Mid-City A-B-C streets received proper names in 1897, B Street became Berendo Street. What’s a “berendo”? Good question. Civil engineers of yore typically kept idea files of potential street names, filled with pleasant or unusual words found in maps, newspapers, books, Pullman railroad cars, etc. So in 1897, as C Street became Catalina and F Street became Fedora, B Street’s new name was – most plausibly – a misspelling of Berenda, a railroad/stagecoach stop between Fresno and Merced that was mentioned often enough in Los Angeles newspapers of the day. And that name was probably a misspelling of berrendo, Spanish for “pronghorn”, a cousin to the antelope that’s native to western North America. Another translation of berrendo is “two-colored” – like the pronghorn.
Find it on the map:
