Named by Mary Penman Moll (1865-1952), a major landowner in early Hollywood. Born in Sacramento, the only child of Scottish immigrants Daniel and Mary Neill Penman, she came to Los Angeles with her parents in 1883 and then to the rural Cahuenga Valley in 1887, just west of the Wilcoxes‘ new “Hollywood” townsite. Here Daniel proved himself a shrewd buyer and seller of real estate – a trait inherited by his daughter, a schoolteacher by trade, who married Charles G. Moll in 1891 and had three daughters with him. Charles died at thirty in 1900 – food poisoning from bad sardines – so Mary raised the kids with her parents. She christened Hawthorn Avenue in 1903 on her Hollywood Bonnie Brier tract. Both names were surely inspired by her Scottish heritage: Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush was an 1894 bestseller by Scottish author Ian Maclaren and the hawthorn tree looms large across Scottish literature and lore. Hawthorn Ave. might have also been a response to H.J. Whitley‘s own tree-themed Hollywood streets (e.g., Sycamore). Moll’s tract covered the entire southern half of Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and La Brea, and she made piles of money selling bits of it off during Hollywood’s rapid growth. She and her family resided on Hollywood Blvd. until 1923, when they decamped for Beverly Hills. The Roosevelt Hotel stands on the location of their old house; the 1921 Mary P. Moll Building is one block east. Finally, although I haven’t been able to prove it, Moll has also been credited with naming both Highland Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard itself.
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