The Emperor Norton Trust

TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: 1887

Glimpsing 16 O’Farrell: The Building Where 10,000 Paid Their Last Respects to the Emperor Norton

November 08, 2026  /  John Lumea

Attentive students of the Emperor Norton story know that, when the Emperor died on 8 January 1880, his body was brought to the City Morgue at 16 O'Farrell Street.

It was in a back room of the morgue, in this building at the east end of O'Farrell, that a reported 10,000 people came to view the Emperor in the morning and early afternoon hours of January 10.

One of the other two tenants of this building — the third was the City Coroner's office — was Lockhart & Porter undertakers, where the Emperor's funeral took place at about 2:30 p.m.

In early 2021, The Emperor Norton Trust was able to establish that 16 O'Farrell was at the northwest corner of O'Farrell Street and Bagley Place — the latter of which today is known as Security Pacific Place. 

But we — nor anyone else, as far as we know — have ever been able to find a photographic record of the building.

Until now. 

Shown here for the first time in this context is a photograph we recently uncovered, taken in the mid to late 1880s, that provides an admittedly blurry — but nonetheless real — view of the unremarkable two-story building where Emperor Norton lay in state in the hours before being laid to rest at the Masonic Cemetery. 

We use the photo as a springboard for a deep-dive into the history of this and several neighboring buildings and sites in the period between the mid 1860s and the earthquake and fires of April 1906 — further illuminating the street scene on the Emperor's funeral day.

We hope you enjoy the results of our "dig" as much as we enjoyed the digging.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / funeral, 16 O'Farrell Street, photograph, O'Farrell Street, Bagley Place, Dupont Street, Fleet Street, Grant Avenue, Market Street, boarding house, lodging house, Lockhart & Porter, San Francisco City Morgue, San Francisco City Coroner, Levi L. Dorr, George A. Lockhart, William H. Porter, Shiels Building, Kohler & Chase Building, The Rendezvous Saloon, John Plagemann, George Bernhard, Benjamin Curtaz, Curtaz Building, Hammam bath house, Madame Blanche Oulif, Morris Lichtenstein, Cohnreich Bros., James C. Sellers, Phelan Building, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, earthquake, 1864, 1868, 1869, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1893, 1906, Cafe Odeon, George W. Leek, Sanders & Johnson, infographic

Joshua Norton, Street Fighter?

November 20, 2025  /  John Lumea

In early 1850, Joshua Norton was brought before San Francisco Alcalde John W. Geary on charge of assault — and was found guilty and fined.

That’s how a “Pioneer” eyewitness remembered it in 1887, in the pages of The Overland Monthly.

Corroborating — preferably contemporaneous — evidence would be needed in order to give this story full credence. But, IF the story is true, it could be seen as providing an early anchor and baseline for later documented reports that Emperor Norton could be prone to having a short fuse, if he felt he was being disrespected.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Joshua Norton, assault, McKinley, Johnson, McKinley Johnson & Co., John W. Geary, alcalde, memory, Henry B. Livingston, Daily Alta California, Overland Monthly, letter to the editor, Society of California Pioneers, 1850, 1887

Emperor Norton’s Residence, the Eureka Lodgings, Was Not Located (Exactly) Where You Think It Was

September 26, 2022  /  John Lumea

Over the last 25 years or so, a consensus has emerged among those attuned to San Francisco history — and particularly among Nortonophiles — that the former site of the Eureka Lodgings — where Emperor Norton is documented to have lived between 1864/1865 and his death in 1880 — is the privately owned public open space (POPOS) known as Empire Park, located at 642 Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny Streets.

That's been the consensus.

But, a careful analysis of two key bodies of evidence — (1) photographs of this stretch of Commercial Street taken between 1877 and 1906, and (2) Sanborn fire insurance and official San Francisco block (property) maps from the generation or two before and after the earthquake and fires of 1906 — reveal the Empire Park designation to be mistaken.

The Eureka Lodgings was located on Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny — just not on that site.

In the attached deeply researched and documented — and extensively illustrated — article, I provide:

1) Confirmation — for the first time, I believe — of the visual ID of the Eureka Lodgings building, using photographs from during and after Emperor Norton's lifetime. (Don’t miss the fabulous detail in these new hi-res scans from 1878, c.1892–94 and 1906 — worth the price of admission!)

2) A new location for the former site of the Eureka that better accords with the historical record.

It's a deep dive — so, pull up a chair!

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places
tags / Eureka Lodgings, 624 Commercial, A. Lietz Company, William Meakin, machine shop, Grabhorn Press, Empire Day, United States Sub-Treasury, 612 Commercial, San Francisco Morning Call, Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, The Hebrew, Philo Jacoby, Ernest Jacoby, Bret Harte, Eadweard Muybridge, panorama, Allen Hancock Knight, Treu Ergeben Hecht, T.E. Hecht, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Sanborn map, block map, 1853, 1864, 1865, 1871, 1872, 1877, 1878, 1880, 1887, 1892, 1894, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1918, 1990, 2000, Empire House

The Secret History of One of Emperor Norton's Favorite Free-Lunch Haunts

March 04, 2022  /  John Lumea

In his 1986 biography of Emperor Norton, William Drury leaned heavily into anecdotal stories forging an association between the Emperor and Martin & Horton’s, a saloon at the southeast corner of Montgomery and Clay Streets, San Francisco, that was known as a hub for editors and reporters — and also for having one of the better free-lunch counters.

But, it turns out that, in addition to Martin & Horton’s, the building on this corner — which was directly across Clay Street from where the Transamerica pyramid now stands — housed a second saloon — a spot that also was known for its good food and drink, and for catering to the journalists and writers who covered the Emperor in their papers.

Which begs the question: Was Emperor Norton a regular at one saloon? — the other? — or both?

Jumping off from a well-known photograph of the Montgomery and Clay building after it suffered a fire in November 1862, the following research documents in some detail the overlapping histories of these two saloons and their proprietors — whose businesses had space in two different buildings on this corner between 1854 and 1887.

It’s a fascinating story.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Martin & Horton's, Clark Martin, Tom Horton, Faust Cellar, Louis Thiele, George Thiele, Joseph Hug, Montgomery Street, Clay Street, free lunch, 1854, 1857, 1862, 1865, 1870, 1873, 1887

© 2026 The Emperor Norton Trust  |  Site design: Alisha Lumea  |  Background: Original image courtesy of Erica Fischer