Emperor Norton in the Happy Valley Room

March 04, 2025 / John Lumea

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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categories / Research, Original sources, Tributes, Places, ARENA
tags / Art, painting, mural, Palace Hotel, Antonio Sotomayor, Happy Valley Room, Happy Valley, cocktail lounge, bar, Pied Piper, Maxfield Parrish, barber shop, Bernard Bernhard, George Bernhard, Alma Spreckels, Art Digest, floor plan, menu, postcard, matchbook, 1877, 1882, 1886, 1909, 1935, 1989, 1991

Emperor Norton's Pipe Dreams

May 12, 2024 / John Lumea

In…

Directory listings showing one of his business interests;
A number of stories about him from his lifetime;
At least one Proclamation by him; and
At least one painting of him done during his life

…there are clues that Emperor Norton had an abiding fondness for cigars and for pipe smoking.

Here, we line up in one place all the evidentiary “dots” we’ve located so far.

Some rare finds here.

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categories / Research, Places, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / tobacco, smoking, cigar, pipe, importing, Sutliff Tobacco Company, Modoc War, art, painting, sculpture, Virgil Williams, Ruth Asawa, Parc 55, 1849, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1863, 1873, 1984

The Pantheonic Statuette of Norton I

May 30, 2023 / John Lumea

It’s well known that souvenir photographs and lithographs of Emperor Norton were sold in San Francisco shops during the Emperor’s lifetime.

Norton biographer William Drury takes it considerably further to claim that, by the early 1870s, there was a whole cottage industry of “Emperor Norton statuettes, Emperor Norton dolls, Emperor Norton mugs and jugs, Emperor Norton Imperial Cigars” — and even that there were peddlers hawking Emperor Norton merch at his funeral.

I find no evidence to support much of what Drury asserts — but…

In 1877 — a couple of years before Emperor Norton died in 1880 — a German immigrant jeweler and sculptor in San Francisco created a highly accomplished statuette of the Emperor that deserves a much closer look than it has received.

Although there is no ready evidence that this nearly-two-foot-tall statuette was sold in shops, there is evidence to suggest that it was a fixture in San Francisco saloons — and even that the Emperor himself had a copy in his apartment.

Among other things, I document here the three known copies of the statuette and offer a glimpse into the life and work of the sculptor.

There even are cameo appearances from historians of Ancient Rome and the Oxford English Dictionary.

It’s a fascinating story, previously untold.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Tributes, ARENA
tags / Art, sculpture, statue, statuette, figurine, Herman J. Brand, Jonas Brand, jeweler, sculptor, plaster, medallion, token, charm, gold, saloon, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Society of California Pioneers, Wells Fargo History Museum, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, photograph, cabinet card, painting, lithograph, terra cotta, Pantheon, pantheonic, Rome, Oxford English Dictionary, 1862, 1865, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1872, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1883, 1906, 1921, 1930, 1935, 1939, 1986, 2021

Emperor Norton as an Artist’s Model

April 26, 2023 / John Lumea

Addie Ballou is best known now — where she is known at all — as a women’s suffrage crusader, a rather bad poet, and a (probably overconfident) lecturer on any of the subjects she was game to talk about for an hour to any group who asked, provided they had a room and a podium.

But, Ballou also had a brief career as a minimally trained portrait artist.

A certain conventional wisdom holds that, in 1877, Emperor Norton sat for a portrait painted by Ballou — and that this is the only such portrait the Emperor ever sat for during his lifetime.

As ever with Emperor Norton, though, a look under the hood reveals that things probably are not quite as we’ve been led to believe.

Read on for some newly uncovered details about old art associations.

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categories / Research, Tributes, Original sources
tags / Art, portrait, painting, sitting, Addie Ballou, Oscar Kunath, Virgil Williams, Alice Brown Chittenden, San Francisco Call, Ward Ritchie Press, San Francisco Art Association, California School of Design, Mechanics' Fair, Mechanics' Pavilion, Bradley & Rulofson, Society of California Pioneers, 1873, 1874, 1877, 1878, 1879

The Emperor Norton Trust

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Emperor Norton in the Happy Valley Room

Emperor Norton's Pipe Dreams

The Pantheonic Statuette of Norton I

Emperor Norton as an Artist’s Model