Israel and Olivia Hall in their Washtenaw Avenue mansion

Olivia Hall shared the real estate interests of her husband, Israel. Concerned that the county fairgrounds with its horse racing track on Hill Street was a bad influence so close to the neighborhood school, she persuaded the Fair Association in 1890 to move the race track to her land at the back of the old Baldwin farm, past what would become Wells Street. She then subdivided the land between Hill and Israel Hall Avenue (later Cambridge) into blocks of residential lots.

now the site of U-M Ruthven Museums