Post-Quake Photograph of Emperor Norton's Block Shows That Building Where He Had Lived Was Leveled
Discovery of Rarely Seen Photo Adds to Body of Evidence for the Specific Location of the Eureka Lodgings Building
THE EMPEROR NORTON TRUST has shared the following photograph a number of times in recent years. The photo shows the north side of the 600 block of Commercial Street (between Montgomery and Kearny Streets). In the foreground of the photo, taken in early 1906 — three months or less before the earthquake and fires of April 1906 — is the building that previously had housed the Eureka Lodgings at 624 Commercial, where Emperor Norton lived from 1864–65 until his death in 1880.
View of north side of the 600 block of Commercial Street (between Montgomery and Kearny Streets), San Francisco, early 1906. Photograph credited to Treu Ergeben (T.E.) Hecht (1875–1937). Photo #AAB–3457, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library. Source: SFPL
Including the buildings “peeping in” from the left and right frames of the photo, the buildings are — from left to right (west to east):
630–632 Commercial
Large 4-story building that housed a mix of apartments; businesses, organizations and clubs; and street-level retail.
624–628 Commercial
San Francisco directories carried listings for the Eureka Lodgings in this 3-story building from 1864 through 1880 — coinciding very closely with Emperor Norton’s residential tenure here. It appears that, by the time this photograph was taken, a rooming house of any description had not operated here for at least 20 years.
620–622 Commercial
William Meakin’s model-making workshop.
614–616 Commercial
Brand-new 4-story building of A. Lietz Co., makers of surveying and nautical instruments. 614–616 had been the address of the previous building on this lot. The new building carries the address 632–634 — apparently reflecting street address revisions in progress at the time.
612 Commercial
Offices of Jewish newspaper, The Hebrew, edited by Philo Jacoby. Previously, from 1863 to 1871, this 3-story building had housed The Morning Call. It was during this period — summer of 1864 — that Samuel Clemens, the future Mark Twain, worked at the Call. Also during this period, Bret Harte had a desk in this building, as his “day job” had him serving as secretary to the superintendent of the branch Mint — which was located next door.
608 Commercial
U.S. Sub-Treasury. This 4-story building, completed in 1877, replaced the original branch Mint building on this site after the Mint moved to its new digs at Fifth and Mission Streets in 1874.
:: :: ::
I KNEW THAT that the former Eureka building had been lost in April 1906. (It was replaced with the current 4-story building on this site in 1910.) But, I’d never seen any photo-documentation of the loss — until this past week.
I received an email from a Lawrence Fong sharing some wonderful family history about his Chinese second-great grandparents, who lived and worked at 611 Commercial Street for the decade from 1873–74 to 1883–84. Lawrence wondered whether his grandparents and Emperor Norton might have interacted with one another. (Almost certainly.)
As a kind of footnote, Lawrence pointed me to the following sad but wonderful photograph showing the relevant section of the north side of the 600 block of Commercial in the wake of the earthquake and fires.
The refugee tent encampment at Portsmouth Square is visible at center left.
Click to enlarge to 4000 px.
View northwest from the Kohl Building, San Francisco — northeast corner of Montgomery and California Streets — showing section of the north side of the 600 block of Commercial Street in the wake of the earthquake and fires of April 1906. Originally published by Bushnell Foto Co. Source: OpenSFHistory / wnp37.00069
I had never before seen this remarkable photograph and — but for Lawrence — might have continued to miss it for who knows how long: When I found the photo in the terrific OpenSFHistory archive, the description did not yet include any distinguishing street name or Commercial Street building ID — so it would not have been susceptible to any of the search terms I typically use in Emperor Norton research. (Thanks to OpenSFHistory for adding details that now will make it easier for future researchers to find the photo!)
One clue that tells us what we’re seeing here: the ruin of the 4-story U.S. Sub–Treasury building, seen at front center of the photograph. Below is a closer view of the ruin looking west from the intersection of Montgomery and Commercial Streets.
Important to note: The gap between the Sub–Treasury and the next ruin visible to the west.
Ruin of 4-story U.S. Sub–Treasury at 608 Commercial Street, San Francisco, looking west from Montgomery Street. 23 April 1906. Collection of Stanford University (California Historical Society Collection). Source: Calisphere
:: :: ::
LAYING THIS PHOTOGRAPH of the aftermath of the earthquake and fires of April 1906 alongside the earlier 1906 photo sharpens the focus on the identities of the buildings along this stretch of the 600 block of Commercial — and what each building suffered.
Here’s my annotation of the source photograph. Click to enlarge:
See photo caption above. Research and infographic by John Lumea.
The orange outline shows the basic form and massing of the former Eureka Lodgings building. As shown in three photographs taken between 1877 and 1906, it appears that the building actually was a little shorter than suggested here.
In addition to the ruin of the U.S. Sub–Treasury building, another clue — or, better, set of clues — that brings the previous cityscape into sharper focus is the “negative spaces” left by the buildings that were leveled:
1
Between the ruins of the “mixed use” building at 630–632 and the A. Lietz Co. building at 614–616 is a leveled site previously occupied by two buildings:
624–628 — where Emperor Norton lived
620–622 — the William Meakin workshop
In the source photograph, the property line / boundary / division / partition between 624–628 and 620–622 is clearly visible.
Today, the former site of 624–628 is occupied by the 4-story mixed-use apartment building at 650–654.
The former site of 620–622 is occupied by Empire Park at 642.
2
Also leveled was 612 — the former offices of The Hebrew and The Morning Call — which stood between A. Lietz Co. at 614–616 and the Sub–Treasury at 608.
At 614–616, A. Lietz Co. bounced back in 1907 with a new building on the same site — which still stands and now carries the address 632.
Ultimately, the Sub–Treasury at 608 mostly was demolished — with the ground-floor facade and most of the ground-floor structure preserved and now home to the San Francisco Historical Society’s (SFHS) offices and galleries at this location.
By 1912, a new building had been constructed where 612 stood. The original 612 backed onto a larger building that wrapped around the back of the Sub–Treasury and had a wider frontage along Clay Street, one block north of Commercial. It appears that the previously separate lots were merged into single lot with a single 4-story building that had frontages on both Commercial and Clay — but that used a Clay Street address.
This building (or, possibly, one that replaced it) still existed 70 years later, in 1982. The Commercial Street frontage is visible in the following photograph. Next door to the west, slightly taller at 632, is the former A. Lietz Co. building, which at the time was home to radio station KABL. The Sub–Treasury remnant is the one-story building with the flagpole.
Detail of view of Commercial Street, San Francisco, looking west from Montgomery Street, 1982. Photograph: Emiliano Echeverria. Source: OpenSFHistory / wnp32.2234
The building was demolished shortly after this photograph was taken, as part of the Bank of Canton’s project to build a new tower atop the Sub–Treasury. While construction of the tower — completed in 1984 and now home to EastWest Bank (555 Montgomery) — preserved the Sub–Treasury remnant, the tower encroaches and erases the original Commercial Street footprint and elevation of 612 — thus threatening to erase the visual history of this building as well.
Today, 612 is discernible only as an imaginary space near the SFHS entrance — the gate, path, and door in the image below — with the space delineated by the small surviving one-story fragment-elevation of the building (the Sub–Treasury) that framed 612 on its east side and the elevation of the successor to the last building (the original A. Lietz & Co. offices) that framed 612 on its west.
But — absent any historical marker — the 612 space is discernible only by the handful of people who happen to know what was here nearly 120 years ago.
The orange outline shows where 612 Commercial Street was relative to its neighbors: the U.S. Sub–Treasury (on the right) and A. Lietz Co. (on the left). Google Street View crop and added graphic by John Lumea.
It would be great to see a marker placed at the 612 Commercial site, to help keep alive the history of 612 as the nexus of The Morning Call, The Hebrew, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Philo Jacoby, and even Frank Soulé, lead author of the landmark 1855 compendium The Annals of San Francisco — who worked in this building when he briefly was editor of the Call in 1869.
In 2016, a plaque was placed inside Empire Park misidentifying the park as the former site of the Eureka Lodgings at 624 Commercial. About a year ago, I urged the sponsor and creator of the plaque — Yerba Buena #1 (San Francisco chapter) of E Clampus Vitus (“the Clampers”) — to address the error. This was not well-received.
But, whatever happens with this Clamper plaque…
A marker should be placed next door at 650–654 Commercial Street, accurately identifying this as the former site of the Eureka — where Emperor Norton donned his regalia every morning and slept every night for the last 14 of of his nearly 62 years.
:: :: ::
For The Emperor Norton Trust’s foundational research into the specific location of the building at 624 Commercial Street that housed the Eureka Lodgings — where Emperor Norton is documented to have lived from sometime between summer 1864 and summer 1865 and his death in January 1880 — see our September 2022 article here.
:: :: ::
For an archive of all of the Trust’s blog posts and a complete listing of search tags, please click here.
Search our blog...