TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON
RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY
Combing through microfiche of old San Francisco newspapers at the San Francisco Public Library yesterday, Emperor's Bridge Campaign board member Joseph Amster stumbled across an item on the front page of the 4 February 1865 edition of the Daily Alta California. The item invites us to take a much closer look at a possible birth date for Emperor Norton that was dismissed by earlier biographers.
Read MoreSome of the earliest photographs of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge were taken in 1936 by James Kenneth Piggott, a commercial photographer who made his living, in part, as a printer and publisher of postcards. More on Piggott — including an intriguing biographical overlap with Emperor Norton — plus three of his 1936 bridge photographs, after the jump.
Read MoreA Proclamation, from the Emperor, in the Pacific Appeal, newspaper:
Read MoreJoshua Norton arrived in San Francisco in 1849 and "reigned" from there as Emperor Norton from 1859 to 1880.
In 1864 — fifteen years after the Emperor's initial arrival and five years into his reign — Carleton Watkins took this photograph of the city, looking out toward Goat Island.
Read MoreThe San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened in November 1936.
In late 1934 or early 1935, Peter Mourer, Jr. — a junior construction engineer on the project — wrote "The Bay Bridge Poem."
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