When one reads that Emperor Norton lived in "the Eureka Lodgings" at "624 Commercial Street," it's tempting to imagine that the Eureka was in a building with one address and one use — and that the Eureka was it.
In fact: There were two buildings on the Eureka site between c.1850 and Emperor Norton's death in 1880, with the Eureka building arriving in 1857. Both buildings had three addresses and a variety of business tenants — with the second of the two buildings hosting the Eureka and two previous hotel/lodging establishments that each occupied only a portion of the top two floors.
At various times during the 1860s ― including while the Emperor was living here between 1864/65 and 1880 — the second building was home to some of the best-known and -respected businesses in early San Francisco history.
Both of the buildings on the Eureka site were located between Montgomery and Kearny Streets, with frontages on both Commercial and Clay Streets.
What follows is, we believe, the first published attempt to establish a "tenant timeline" of the Commercial Street frontages of these buildings between c.1850 and 1880.
Read on for some fascinating history — and some terrific advertisements!
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The received wisdom, since the time of Emperor Norton’s death in January 1880, has been that the Emperor lived at his final and most famous San Francisco residence — the Eureka Lodgings, at 624 Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny — “for seventeen years.”
That was the phrase that a number of San Francisco papers used in their obituaries and funeral notices. The most influential Norton biographers of the twentieth century extrapolated from this that the Emperor lived at the Eureka from 1863 to 1880. And, now, this claim is firmly ensconced as one of the most oft-invoked tenets of the biographical catechism of Norton I.
But, the directories of the period don’t support an 1863 arrival date.
Rather, they suggest that the Emperor might have taken up his room at the Eureka Lodgings as late as summer 1865.
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It long has been known that the U.S. Census of 1870 recorded Emperor Norton as “Insane.”
Much less often noted is that this Census also marked the Emperor as having his voting rights “denied or abridged.”
But, exactly how were these determinations made? Census takers were known as Assistant Marshals. And, clues (presented here) from the U.S. Census Office’s Instructions to Assistant Marshals for 1870 strongly suggest that Emperor Norton could have been deemed “Insane” and had his voting rights stripped based on little more than a private conversation between the census taker and the Emperor’s landlord at the Eureka Lodgings.
Included here are images from the Instructions as well as a rarely seen hi-res view of the full Census page showing Emperor Norton’s listing alongside the listing of every other person residing at the Eureka when the census taker paid his call to the Eureka on 1 August 1870.
What emerges from the listings is a portrait of an establishment that — based on the range of occupations of the tenants — should not be characterized by words, like “flophouse,” that later accounts have used to downgrade the Emperor’s residence.
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It long has been known that, upon Emperor Norton's death in January 1880, many of his personal effects — including his regimentals, a hat, his sword and his treasured Serpent Scepter, an elaborate walking stick given him by his subjects in Oregon — went to the Society of California Pioneers (only to be lost 26 years later in the earthquake and fire).
Many, but not all. This week, we discovered archival traces of an early 1880 donation to the Odd Fellows' Library Association of San Francisco. The donation — by David Hutchinson, Emperor Norton's longtime landlord at the Eureka Lodgings — included the stamp the Emperor used to place his seal on his proclamations. It might also have included the Emperor's final proclamation: written and sealed, but not yet delivered and published.
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