In 1852, Joshua Norton bought a well-situated piece of San Francisco property that remained vacant for more than two decades — but that, a year after his death, became the landmark site that it remains 145 years later.
Joshua owned the property for only a few months. But, the timing of the purchase; the auctioneer; the future owners; the proximity to his funeral site; and the monumental buildings that rose here may imbue the land with more significance than any other acreage that Joshua purchased at the height of his prosperity.
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Between 1853 and 1859 — a period during which the courts handed him a series of crushing legal defeats that ultimately forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1856 — Joshua Norton engaged in a pattern of making bold public moves that belied — and defied — the harsh facts on the ground.
We recently discovered two early markers in this pattern that appear to have gone undocumented before now:
1) In August 1853 — on the eve of his first major court loss — Joshua offered himself as a Whig candidate for California State Assembly.
2) Under the terms of the Fourth District Court’s ruling of August 1853, the Court ordered the San Francisco sheriff to seize and sell two of Joshua Norton’s properties. In November 1853 — three days before the sale — Joshua took out a newspaper ad seeking a loan for $7,500, possibly part of a gambit to buy back the properties.
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In October 1854, the California Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling against Joshua Norton & Co. in Ruiz v. Norton — the famous “rice case.”
Details of the fallout from this ruling suggest that Joshua already was overextended and carrying heavy debt before the rice fiasco; that he was overinvested — and highly leveraged — in real estate; and that, in general, his wealth was much more fragile and precarious than often is supposed.
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