After Andrew Hay died in 1903, his widow Lizzie Thurber Hay and his land holdings west of Hollywood were acquired by real-estate developer William H. Hay. It seems likely there was a family connection between Andrew and William Hay, but, if so, it has been obscured in history. William Hay was born in 1864 in Hamilton, Ontario, a port on Lake Ontario that is 80 miles east of London, where Andrew Hay was born eighteen years earlier. His father died when he was a boy. In 1880, at age fifteen, he moved with his mother to Los Angeles, where she died three years later.
In 1905 William, Hay developed the late Andrew Hay’s property into a subdivision he called Crescent Heights. The street grid of the 160-acre development remains largely intact today, comprised of twelve blocks bounded by Sunset Boulevard on the north, Hayvenhurst (now spelled Havenhurst) Avenue on the west, Santa Monica Boulevard at the south and Crescent Avenue (now Fairfax Avenue) to the east. William Hay named two of the streets referencing himself: Hayworth and Hayvenhurst avenues.
While most of the home sites in Crescent Heights were targeted to the middle class, Hay set aside the row fronting Sunset Boulevard – and the western terminus of the streetcar from Hollywood – as generous lots for large homes. He reserved the largest lot, two-and-a-half acres at the corner of Sunset and Hayvenhurst, for himself.