The beloved Emperor Norton mural at the Palace Hotel, in San Francisco, had its public debut at the Palace 90 years ago today — on 4 March 1935.
The mural is one of two that were painted at the time by Antonio Sotomayor. The other features Lotta Crabtree and George Washington II.
Today, both murals are in the "lounge" room of the Pied Piper Bar & Lounge.
But, this is not where they started out. In fact, the murals have been in their current location for only the last 34 years of their 90-year history.
Did you know that Maxfield Parrish's famous 1909 painting "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" originally was in a different room — and that the room the painting now presides over originally was a barber shop?
Have you ever heard of the Happy Valley cocktail lounge — and do you know what made the Happy Valley distinctive?
Pull up a chair for a deep-dive into the forgotten story of these Sotomayor murals — including the Norton mural, which has kept the Emperor’s benevolent spirit alive among Palace Hotel drinkers and diners for 90 years.
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For some eight decades, maybe more, the story has circulated in Emperor Norton biographies and in Nortonland more broadly that Joshua Norton owned the Genessee — the storeship that “received” the hundred tons of rice that Joshua’s firm bought off a ship in San Francisco Bay in December 1852.
According to this story, the Genessee was a major asset of Joshua Norton & Co., with the firm using the storeship as a warehouse and doing a brisk business in renting out space in the ship to other merchants.
In fact, the only contemporaneous documentation of a connection between Joshua Norton and the Genessee makes it very clear that Joshua was the renter. He did not own the Genessee — he simply rented warehouse space there, as many other traders and merchants did.
However, we recently uncovered a previously undocumented newspaper ad which suggests that — more than two years earlier, in August 1850 — Joshua Norton did lease space in a different storeship, the Orator, with the intention of sub-leasing this space to others.
Read on for documentation of the original arrivals of the Genessee and the Orator in San Francisco — of when these cargo / passenger ships were sold and converted into storeships — of how Joshua Norton’s path intersected with the Genessee and the Orator — and of these ships’ later fates.
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In late 1882 — just shy of three years after Emperor Norton died in January 1880 — two brothers, Dick and Jack Kohler — arrived in San Francisco from Australia.
The Kohler brothers were known as musicians — quite famous ones — and had spent much of the 1870s in San Francisco cultivating that reputation.
But, on this return visit, the Kohlers brought something new: 150 wax figures, which they set up as a wax museum on Market Street.
A month after opening the museum, the Kohlers added a new figure to the exhibit: Emperor Norton.
The specific venue where this waxen Emperor stood watch is as significant as the tribute itself.
It’s a fascinating story. Dig in!
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