TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON
RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY
In this letter to supporters and friends, Emperor's Bridge Campaign president John Lumea reviews the Campaign's accomplishments in 2015 and looks ahead to its opportunities in 2016.
Read MoreHere, in one handy list, are the links to The Emperor's Campaign's original research and other commentary that we published on our blog in 2015.
Read MoreIn a brief article last year, veteran San Francisco journalist Lynn Ludlow offered a fascinating, erudite and thought-provoking account of why early Herb Caen had it all wrong on "Frisco."
Read MoreEmperor Norton was a favorite subject of a number of celebrity portrait photography studios that came to prominence in San Francisco during his reign. The Emperor is most closely associated with the studio of Bradley & Rulofson; and he was included in the studio's Celebrity Catalogue, which clients used to order prints of photographs produced by the studio. The Catalogue was a kind of index of the social stratification of the day — and offers a window into the Emperor's place in the social structure.
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The Christmas tree in Union Square, San Francisco, 1910. Original black-and-white source photograph: Collection of the Oakland Public Library history room. Hand-tinted version © Bennett Hall 2015.
The Emperor's Bridge Campaign invites one and all to join us in this third enactment of a new holiday tradition. From the Christmas tree in Union Square, San Francisco, we process to The House of Shields saloon, where we raise a glass to Emperor Norton in celebration of the legend that the tree was the Emperor's idea. Please join us!
Read MoreThe Emperor outlines his immigration policy in this timely Proclamation, published in the Pacific Appeal newspaper on 24 April 1875.
Read MoreIn the late nineteenth century, the popular amusement resort known as Woodward's Gardens — located in the area that now is San Francisco's Mission District — had what has been called the West Coast's largest rollerskating rink. In March 1872, Emperor Norton tried to go for a skate there. The Emperor was turned away. He was not happy.
Read MoreA Proclamation of Thanks to all those who pledged to the summer 2015 Kickstarter for the limited edition t-shirt to inaugurate the Campaign's series of Sartorial Public Service Announcements.
Read MoreThe Emperor's Bridge Campaign is delighted to announce the appointment of John Law to join us as our newest Advisor.
Read MoreWhen we tried to establish the authenticity of an unsourced "Norton I" signature, we found the source — and a whole lot more.
Read MoreThe Emperor's Bridge Campaign is pleased to announce that the nonprofit San Francisco History Association, as part of its Research Gift program, recently awarded the Campaign with a lead grant to develop and publish a book of selected Proclamations of Emperor Norton.
Read MoreA portion of remarks offered by Emperor's Bridge Campaign founder and president John Lumea at the Campaign's inaugural celebration of Empire Day in San Francisco's Redwood Park on 17 September 2015. The event was held to mark the 156th anniversary of Joshua Norton's declaration of himself as "Emperor of these United States" on 17 September 1859 and to welcome the 157th year of the Nortonian realm and reign.
Read MoreAn Empire Day meditation on one of least understood words of Emperor Norton's original Proclamation of 17 September 1859.
Read MoreIn the current San Francisco mayoral election, one of the challengers to sitting mayor Ed Lee has offered an anti-corruption plan that includes a proposal that San Francisco create a new elected office for a Public Advocate.
Other major cities already have Public Advocates; the level of authority depends on the city.
But the general idea is that the Public Advocate is a kind of official watchdog — someone who helps to ensure that the citizens are being treated fairly; that government agencies and private companies are properly maintaining basic utilities and services like streets, public transit, water, electricity and gas (and not gouging the people in the process); and that corruption that affects the general populace is called out wherever it is found.
Sound familiar? It should.
The original Public Advocate is Emperor Norton.
The conventional wisdom is that Emperor Norton was solely a San Francisco figure — a creature of the streets, parks, libraries, lecture halls and newspapers of his adopted city. In fact, the Emperor was a very well-known presence in Oakland and Berkeley, as well, making weekly visits to both places — and sometimes staying for days or weeks at a time. Please join The Emperor's Bridge Campaign for a special event with local historian Richard Schwartz, exploring an overlooked — but important — part of the Emperor's story.
Read MoreThree intriguing photographs of Emperor Norton taken by the studio of Thomas Houseworth & Co. in the 1870s show the evolution of the Emperor's style.
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Cabinet card of Emperor Norton, c.1878, by Bradley & Rulofson. Collection of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Join The Emperor's Bridge Campaign as we celebrate the foundation of Norton's Empire on 17 September 1859 and the continuation of that Empire into the present and the future — a borderless Empire of the heart open to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Please gather in Redwood Park, San Francisco — adjacent to the Transamerica Pyramid — on Thursday 17 September at 6 p.m. sharp.
We're calling it Empire Day — and we hope that this will mark the beginning of a new tradition.
Read MoreThe Wall Street Journal is up today with a front-page article that looks at the coalescence, in recent years, of something approaching a Bay Area "movement" to celebrate Emperor Norton. The Journal features The Emperor's Bridge Campaign in its profile, and writes that the Campaign brings together "the boldest efforts to honor the emperor."
Read MoreThe Emperor's Bridge Campaign is honored to announce that, on Sunday 6 September, our good friend Joseph Amster will be offering — as a fundraising benefit for the Campaign — a special edition of his regular Emperor Norton's Fantastic San Francisco Time Machine historical walking tour.
100% of all ticket sales for this event will go to The Emperor's Bridge Campaign.
Read MoreOne of the most arresting and enigmatic images of Emperor Norton is an 1870s watercolor of him — in street clothes and smoking a pipe — that hung for more than 30 years in the library of the Bohemian Club, in San Francisco. No doubt known by the Emperor himself during his lifetime, this painting later made its way into the Overland Monthly — thanks, in part, to a member of Robert Louis Stevenson's extended family.
Here's the story of this wonderful portrait.
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