The Emperor Norton Trust

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

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: 1893

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

Is the Clock Tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building Based on the Bell Tower of a Cathedral in Spain?

November 15, 2022  /  John Lumea

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.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Ferry Building, clock tower, Giralda, Seville, Spain, Arthur Page Brown, A. Page Brown, Herman Scheffauer, Madison Square Garden, Stanford White, McKim Mead and White, medieval, Moorish, Beaux-Arts, The Argonaut, Town Talk, London Daily Express, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Call, New York Sun, Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, 1198, 1568, 1890, 1891, 1893, 1895, 1898, 1903, 1905, 1906, 1977

Mark Twain Ate Here. Did Emperor Norton?

January 16, 2017  /  John Lumea

At least three times — in a 1906 autobiographical reminiscence; in an 1893 short story; and in his 1872 book, Roughing It — Mark Twain mentions a low-fare eatery, the Miners' Restaurant, that was on the same street as — and only a block away from — the Emperor Norton's residence.

Twain himself is reported to have adopted this restaurant as his "headquarters" in the winter of 1866 and 1867.

Might the Emperor have frequented this place, too?

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Miner's Restaurant, Commercial Street, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, menu, 1866, 1867, 1875, 1861, 1865, 1872, 1878, 1880, 1893, 1906

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