Named for Corinth, Mississippi – or more specifically for the Second Battle of Corinth, a brief but bloody Civil War conflict. (General William Rosecrans led the Union Army to victory.) In 1919, when the town of Sawtelle first joined the City of Los Angeles, a dozen of its ordinal streets were renamed in honor of Civil War battle sites – a nod to the many Sawtelle residents who were veterans of said war. Thus 5th Street became Corinth Avenue while others became Antietam, Booneville, Carthage, Chickamauga, Gettysburg, Jonesboro, Mobile, Perryville, Petersburg, Shiloh, and Vicksburg avenues. After Sawtelle and L.A. were properly consolidated in 1922 – that first attempt was deemed invalid – bureaucrats replaced the Civil War theme with a new set of ordinal streets, so Corinth became 105th Avenue. The streets’ current monikers (e.g., Cotner Avenue) were finalized in 1925. It’s not clear why Corinth alone got to reclaim its battlefield name. Maybe someone mistakenly thought it honored the ancient Greek city.
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