The Emperor of Brooklyn, Part 2
A Short-Lived East Bay Newspaper That Emperor Norton Befriended in 1872 Published a Significant Proclamation of His a Week Before It Ran in San Francisco
From between sometime in 1856 until the end of 1872, the area of present-day Oakland, Calif., to the southeast of Lake Merritt — part of what today is known as East Oakland — was the independent township of Brooklyn, Calif.
Residents of Brooklyn voted in October 1872 to annex Brooklyn to Oakland, and the annexation was complete by the end of the year — although the area continued to be called Brooklyn for a few years after that.
On his weekly visits to Oakland, Emperor Norton visited Brooklyn. I wrote about this in my June 2015 piece, “The Emperor of Brooklyn.”
The main documentary evidence for a Brooklyn connection to the Emperor was a couple of Proclamations that were published in the San Francisco-based Pacific Appeal. The Emperor had designated the Appeal his as his “imperial gazette” in December 1870 — and, ultimately, the paper published some 250 of his Proclamations. But, these particular Proclamations were datelined “Brooklyn.”
One of them, published in 1872 — the same year that Emperor Norton issued his three “Bay Bridge proclamations” — called for consideration of “a tunnel under water…for a railroad communication” between Oakland and San Francisco — setting out the vision for the Transbay Tube, which opened more than a century later in 1874.
Proclamation of Emperor Norton published in the Pacific Appeal newspaper on 15 June 1872. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
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NOTICE that this Proclamation was issued on 12 May 1872 — but not published in the Pacific Appeal until June 15th.
It turns out that the same Proclamation — with wording adjusted slightly for where Emperor Norton was when he wrote and issued it — was published a week earlier, on June 8th, in a Brooklyn paper called the Brooklyn Home Journal and Alameda County Advertiser.
The Brooklyn Home Journal was a weekly published for 18 months, from July 1871 until December 1872.
Proclamation of Emperor Norton published in the Brooklyn Home Journal and Alameda County Advertiser newspaper on 8 June 1872. Source: GenealogyBank
The editorial preamble tells us that the Emperor dropped off the Proclamation personally.
So, where was the Brooklyn Home Journal located? The paper’s masthead tells us that the offices of the paper were located on Brooklyn Hall, at the “foot of Walker Street,” in Brooklyn.
Masthead of Brooklyn Home Journal, 8 June 1872, p.1. Source: Genealogy Bank
More specifically, according to ads for Brooklyn Hall, the building was at the corner of Walker and Jackson Streets.
Ad for Brooklyn Hall, Oakland Daily Transcript, 29 April 1871, p. 2. Source: GenealogyBank
Here’s a detail from an 1869 map of Oakland and Brooklyn, showing the intersection of Walker and Jackson — about where the westbound railroad track forks in two. (Click for the whole zoomable map.)
Detail from map of Oakland and Brooklyn, E.C. Sessions, Agent for the Purchase and Sale of Real Estate, c. 1869. Collection of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Source: Oakland Wiki via Calisphere.
On 23 May 1873, the Oakland Daily News published an Oakland City Council ordinance, passed on May 19th and approved by the Mayor on the 22nd, changing the names of several streets — including changing the name of Walker Street to its current name, Thirteenth Avenue, and Jackson Street to Eleventh Street.
Here’s an 1885 photograph taken from 13th Avenue and 12th Street, looking south towards the Alameda Estuary. The intersection of 13th Avenue and 11th Street — which the Brooklyn Home Journal described, in its masthead, as “the foot of Walker Street” — is visible one block to the south.
Ads for Brooklyn Hall trail off in August 1876. So, it’s not clear whether the old Brooklyn Hall building that housed the Journal is in this photo. But, no doubt, the Emperor Norton — who had died just five years earlier — would have recognized much of this view from his trips to the Journal in 1872.
Oakland, Calif., looking south on 13th Avenue from East 12th Street, c.1885. Photograph by Henry W. Domes (1864–1919). Collection of the Oakland Public Library. Source: Calisphere
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THE BROOKLYN HOME JOURNAL seems to have held Emperor Norton in fond regard.
It appears that the Journal first took note of the Emperor in its pages on 9 March 1872. The item suggests that the Emperor may have paid a courtesy call to the Journal’s offices — or at least that someone from the paper spoke to, or overheard, him in the street.
Item re Emperor Norton visit to Brooklyn, Calif., in Brooklyn Home Journal, 9 March 1872, p. 3. Source: GenealogyBank
Subsequent, over the spring and summer of 1872, the Brooklyn Home Journal published at least three Proclamations from Emperor Norton and at least that many news items about him.
The Masonic Mirror was a journal of the Masons on the Pacific Coast, established in September 1869.
Then, on 18 October 1872, the Journal reprinted an editorial from the Masonic Mirror — a journal of the Masons on the Pacific Coast — that the San Francisco Chronicle had published, in slightly abbreviated form, the previous April.
The Journal’s editorial preamble leaves little doubt as to the paper’s sympathies.
Reprint of editorial from the Masonic Mirror, in the Brooklyn Home Journal, 18 October 1872, p.3. Source: GenealogyBank
Emperor Norton liked to go where he was welcome. It’s little wonder that he made himself a familiar face at the offices of the Brooklyn Home Journal and Alameda County Advertiser.
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