In connection with The Emperor Norton Trust’s recent proposal that the San Francisco Ferry Building’s clock tower be named “The Emperor Norton Tower” next year — the 125th anniversary of the Ferry Building — we’ve been doing some additional research into the design and construction of the building and its tower.

The Ferry Building opened in 1898, and one of the chestnuts that has been repeated about the building for most of its lifetime — increasingly so in the period after World War II — is the claim that the design of the clock tower is “based on” — or “modeled after” — or “patterned after” the 12th-century bell tower, known as La Giralda, of the Seville Cathedral in Spain.

Some commentators have gone so far as to say that the Ferry Building clock tower is a “replica” of the Giralda.

But, the historical and visual record reveals the Ferry Building tower’s architectural debt to the Giralda to be significantly less than these unqualified claims suggest.

Read on for a well-documented, highly illustrated deep-dive.