The Emperor Norton Trust

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

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: Boston

Lewis Wharf, Boston's Gateway to Joshua Norton's New World

February 06, 2023  /  John Lumea

When Joshua Norton arrived in Boston on 12 March 1846, the packet ship Sunbeam that had carried him from Liverpool docked at Lewis Wharf.

Probably the first structure that Joshua saw when he stepped off the ship was the wharf's market building — an impressive, long, 4-plus-story gabled edifice of timber and local Quincy granite that had been built ten years earlier, in 1836.

Although no longer being put to the same uses that it was in the 1830s and '40s, that signature building still stands on Lewis Wharf — and perhaps is the only non-California place in the United States that the once and future Emperor is documented to have passed through.

Read on for a brief but richly illustrated history of Lewis Wharf and its signature building — including the wharf's deep ties to one of the most legendary figures in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States of which Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor.  

Plenty of documentary goodies here: Engravings, photographs, plans, maps and newspaper clippings from 1772 to the present.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Boston, Sunbeam, Enoch Train, Lewis Wharf, Lewis Wharf Company, Commercial Street (Boston), Atlantic Avenue (Boston), building, market, warehouse, granite, gable, Thomas Lewis, Samuel Shaw Lewis, Thomas Hancock, John Hancock, Hancock Wharf, plan, map, 1764, 1772, 1775, 1789, 1795, 1828, 1832, 1834, 1836, 1837, 1838, 1846, 1870, 1877, 1884, 1904, 1920s, 1950s, 1960s, 1973

Emperor Norton Arrives on the Great White Way

January 17, 2023  /  John Lumea

The Emperor Norton character had only a few lines — but, the lines he had were good ones.

Both the character and the lines arrived on Broadway courtesy of one of the most influential theater collectives of the twentieth century.

Today, Lee Strasberg, Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan, Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner are household names to students of the American theater. Their legacy approach, “the Method,” and their legacy project, The Actors Studio — founded in 1947 — is known to millions.

But, in 1934, when these playwrights, directors and actors — and their Group Theatre — brought their play Gold Eagle Guy to Broadway, they were unknowns.

It appears that the Broadway production of Gold Eagle Guy marked the first time that Emperor Norton was portrayed on a Broadway stage.

The Emperor was played by Stella Adler’s brother, Luther Adler.

The fascinating story of this play — and of how the character of Emperor Norton gave voice to ideas expressed in the recently published Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley — is on the flip.

Includes archival Playbill images; an early cartoon by Al Hirschfeld; and a wonderful rare live-stage photograph of the Broadway production of Gold Eagle Guy, showing Luther Adler playing Emperor Norton.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Gold Eagle Guy, Group Theatre, Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Clifford Odets, Stella Adler, Luther Adler, Sanford Meisner, New York, Broadway, Morosco Theatre, Belasco Theatre, New York Times, Brooks Atkinson, Al Hirschfeld, Boston, Majestic Theatre, Playbill, Actors Studio, David Belasco, Melvin Levy, 1934, 1935

Joshua Norton First Set Foot in the United States in 1846 — in Boston

May 25, 2021  /  John Lumea

In the United States, the prevailing narrative about Joshua Norton, for 80 years and more, has been that

  • Joshua did not leave Cape Town until late 1848 or early 1849 — prompted by the deaths of both parents and his two nearest siblings between May 1846 and August 1848, and possibly also by news of the California Gold Rush.

  • He sailed directly from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro, arriving in Rio early to mid 1849, and from Rio to San Francisco.

  • He may have spent a few months in South America between his arrivals in Rio and San Francisco.

  • His introduction to the United States was his arrival in San Francisco in late 1849.

But a persuasive body of evidence — including a passenger list, a disembarkation ticket and two newspaper arrivals notices — points to a different reality: Joshua Norton initially sailed from Liverpool to Boston, arriving in Boston in March 1846.

This means that Joshua probably left Cape Town no later than November 1845 — and that the reasons for his departure had nothing to do with family deaths or the Gold Rush.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Joshua Norton, Cape Town, Liverpool, Boston, passenger list, disembarkation ticket, Sunbeam, Louis Norton, Sarah Norden, Philip Norton, John Norton, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849

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