Named for real estate agent Charles Edward Norton (1865-1911), who cofounded the Crescent Heights tract in 1905 with partner William H. Hay. (Norton Avenue was born when the tract was.) Known as “Doc” to his friends, Norton was born in Amherst, Ohio and came to Los Angeles in 1888 to get into real estate. (Curiously, this would have been right after the city’s big 1887 real estate bubble had burst.) He married Maude Boynton (1878-1951), a Maine transplant, in 1904; news articles indicate that the two had been companions for at least four years by that point. A childless couple, the Nortons built themselves a fine home on the tract – but the good times were not to last: “Doc” was felled by a heart attack at the tender age of 46. Maude remarried twice and wound up in Escondido. P.S. The other Norton Avenue, in Central Los Angeles, is for a different Norton.
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