First a Street, Next a Tower
“Emperor Norton Place” Is a Start — Not the Finish
DOES the honorary naming of a single block of street put to bed the entire 90-year-long civic naming enterprise on behalf of Emperor Norton?
Absolutely not!
Don’t get me wrong. Last week’s vote by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (SFBoS) to add “Emperor Norton Place” as a commemorative name for the 600 block of Commercial Street — the narrow lane where Emperor Norton can be documented to have lived from 1864/65 until his death in 1880 — is a big deal. The Emperor Norton Trust celebrates this naming. We support it. And, we are grateful for the leadership of SFBoS president Aaron Peskin and others in bringing this naming about.
But, it’s important to understand that “Emperor Norton Place” is a name that will have primarily local significance. San Francisco “history community” insiders and other locals interested in the history of San Francisco and the legacy of the Emperor will embrace the naming — as they should — and, they will use the naming to create teachable moments, including educating resident and visiting families and friends about Emperor Norton.
The thing is…
The City has no promotional apparatus for leveraging the honorary name of — let’s be honest — a side street in a away that can make those OUTSIDE San Francisco and the Bay Area care about the namesake.
The existence of precisely such an apparatus — a mechanism for national and international promotion and branding — for the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge is part of what long made the Bay Bridge a “holy grail” of Emperor Norton naming.
The same is true of The Emperor Norton Trust’s current proposal that the clock tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building be named the Emperor Norton Tower.
Like the Bay Bridge, the Ferry Building and its clock tower already are recognized as landmarks — and already are being used to promote San Francisco to the rest of the country and to the world.
Putting Emperor Norton’s name on the Ferry Building clock tower will put all those clock-tower eyeballs on Emperor Norton.
That would be a lot more eyeballs than ever will see a sign or two on the 600 block of Commercial Street.
But, this is not an either/or argument.
If anything, “Emperor Norton Place” helps to make the case for “Emperor Norton Tower.”
It does so, in part, by providing to the two entities whose support is key to the approval of any “Emperor Norton Tower” naming of the Ferry Building clock tower — the Port of San Francisco and the Ferry Building’s leaseholder — a current example of local government legislation to honor the Emperor.
Put another way: The “Emperor Norton Place” naming tells the Port and the leaseholder that — in general — Emperor Norton civic naming is a reasonable and worthy thing to do. It gives these entities extra permission to take seriously an “Emperor Norton Tower” proposal for the clock tower.
More: The “Place” and the “Tower” can work hand in hand, with the street pointing to the tower — something that becomes wonderfully clear when one recognizes that the clock tower of the Ferry Building is uniquely visible from the stretch of Commercial Street where Emperor Norton lived.
To see our proposal, click “Learn More” at EmperorNortonTower.org
Looking east on Commercial Street from Grant Street, San Francisco, with the San Francisco Ferry Building clock tower in the vista. Photograph © 2019 by David Luigi Gregory
:: :: ::
For an archive of all of the Trust’s blog posts and a complete listing of search tags, please click here.
Search our blog...