The Ferry Building Clock Tower from Emperor Norton's Street
Early Views from a Less Familiar Vista
BY FAR, the best-known vista of the 245-foot-tall clock tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building is from along Market Street, looking northeast.
The best-known street vista — but not the only one.
The clock tower also rises as the eastern visual terminus of Commercial Street — a street that now runs east-west from Grant Avenue (east) to Battery (west), with pedestrian carve-outs that carry the view west from Battery along the traditional path of Commercial, which originally extended all the way to the waterfront (Google Map here).
On today’s Commercial Street, the tower is most readily seen from the 2-block stretch between Montgomery Street to the east and Grant Avenue to the west — with Kearny Street lying parallel to, and midway between, Montgomery and Grant, and Grant being the western terminus of Commercial.
This section of Commercial Street ― specifically, mid-block between Montgomery and Kearny Streets — is where Emperor Norton lived from 1864/65 until his death in 1880.
The view of the Ferry Building clock tower from here is one reason why The Emperor Norton Trust has proposal that the tower be named Emperor Norton Tower. You can read our proposal and commentaries by clicking the Learn More button at EmperorNortonTower.org.
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IN PREVIOUS generations, before the area along Commercial Street was much more built up than it is now, the Ferry Building clock tower was visible from along the full length of the street.
Here is a selection of Commercial Street views of the tower from c.1900 to 1960:
San Francisco Ferry Building clock tower from Commercial Street near Drumm Street, c.1900. Marilyn Blaisdell Collection. Source: OpenSFHistory/wnp37.02933
Clock tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building from Commercial Street near Grant Avenue, c.1930s. This is a block-and-a-half to the west on Commercial from where Emperor Norton lived. Marilyn Blaisdell Collection. Source: OpenSFHistory/wnp37.01756
San Francisco Ferry Building clock tower from Commercial Street near Drumm Street, 19 November 1935. Source: OpenSFHistory/wnp27.5544
Clock tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building clock from Commercial Street near Grant Avenue, 15 August 1949. Source: OpenSFHistory/wnp27.0848
San Francisco Ferry Building clock tower from Commercial Street between Battery and Front Street, 1959. Current site of 1 Embarcadero Center. Photograph by John Harder. Source: OpenSFHistory/wnp28.2475
Clock tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building from Commercial Street at Sansome Street, 1959. This is a block-and-a-half to the east on Commercial from where Emperor Norton lived. Source: OpenSFHistory/wnp14.2213
San Francisco Ferry Building clock tower from Commercial Street at Grant Avenue, 21 July 1960. Source: OpenSFHistory/wnp 27.5183
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