The Emperor Norton Trust

TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Is the Clock Tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building Based on the Bell Tower of a Cathedral in Spain?

November 15, 2022  /  John Lumea

In connection with The Emperor Norton Trust’s recent proposal that the San Francisco Ferry Building’s clock tower be named “The Emperor Norton Tower” next year — the 125th anniversary of the Ferry Building — we’ve been doing some additional research into the design and construction of the building and its tower.

The Ferry Building opened in 1898, and one of the chestnuts that has been repeated about the building for most of its lifetime — increasingly so in the period after World War II — is the claim that the design of the clock tower is “based on” — or “modeled after” — or “patterned after” the 12th-century bell tower, known as La Giralda, of the Seville Cathedral in Spain.

Some commentators have gone so far as to say that the Ferry Building clock tower is a “replica” of the Giralda.

But, the historical and visual record reveals the Ferry Building tower’s architectural debt to the Giralda to be significantly less than these unqualified claims suggest.

Read on for a well-documented, highly illustrated deep-dive.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Ferry Building, clock tower, Giralda, Seville, Spain, Arthur Page Brown, A. Page Brown, Herman Scheffauer, Madison Square Garden, Stanford White, McKim Mead and White, medieval, Moorish, Beaux-Arts, The Argonaut, Town Talk, London Daily Express, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Call, New York Sun, Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, 1198, 1568, 1890, 1891, 1893, 1895, 1898, 1903, 1905, 1906, 1977

The Mixed Economy of the Eureka Lodgings Building of Commercial Street

October 28, 2022  /  John Lumea

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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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Commercial Street, Montgomery Street, Kearny Street, Eureka Lodgings, Arcade, Arcade Saloon, Hotel Richelieu, Benton House, Aaron Babcock, David Hutchinson, John Cabaniss, A.C. Gamble, Pierre Trapet, Felix Hanlon, Meussdorffer, hatter, Lawrence & Houseworth, John W. Cherry, Contra Costa Laundry, Kohler Chase & Co., directories, advertising, advertisement, Daily Alta California, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco Daily Herald, 154 Commercial, 156 Commercial, 158 Commercial, 624 Commercial, 626 Commercial, 628 Commercial, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861, 1864, 1865, 635 Commercial, 637 Commercial, 175 Clay, 177 Clay, 637 Clay

Emperor Norton’s Residence, the Eureka Lodgings, Was Not Located (Exactly) Where You Think It Was

September 26, 2022  /  John Lumea

Over the last 25 years or so, a consensus has emerged among those attuned to San Francisco history — and particularly among Nortonophiles — that the former site of the Eureka Lodgings — where Emperor Norton is documented to have lived between 1864/1865 and his death in 1880 — is the privately owned public open space (POPOS) known as Empire Park, located at 642 Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny Streets.

That's been the consensus.

But, a careful analysis of two key bodies of evidence — (1) photographs of this stretch of Commercial Street taken between 1877 and 1906, and (2) Sanborn fire insurance and official San Francisco block (property) maps from the generation or two before and after the earthquake and fires of 1906 — reveal the Empire Park designation to be mistaken.

The Eureka Lodgings was located on Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny — just not on that site.

In the attached deeply researched and documented — and extensively illustrated — article, I provide:

1) Confirmation — for the first time, I believe — of the visual ID of the Eureka Lodgings building, using photographs from during and after Emperor Norton's lifetime. (Don’t miss the fabulous detail in these new hi-res scans from 1878, c.1892–94 and 1906 — worth the price of admission!)

2) A new location for the former site of the Eureka that better accords with the historical record.

It's a deep dive — so, pull up a chair!

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places
tags / Eureka Lodgings, 624 Commercial, A. Lietz Company, William Meakin, machine shop, Grabhorn Press, Empire Day, United States Sub-Treasury, 612 Commercial, San Francisco Morning Call, Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, The Hebrew, Philo Jacoby, Ernest Jacoby, Bret Harte, Eadweard Muybridge, panorama, Allen Hancock Knight, Treu Ergeben Hecht, T.E. Hecht, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Sanborn map, block map, 1853, 1864, 1865, 1871, 1872, 1877, 1878, 1880, 1887, 1892, 1894, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1918, 1990, 2000, Empire House

Recovering Emperor Norton’s 1861 Proclamation Against Privateering

August 12, 2022  /  John Lumea

In June 1861, Emperor Norton issued a Proclamation against privateering — which basically was state-sanctioned piracy.

Recently, we discovered — or, more accurately, recovered — an image of the Emperor’s handwritten manuscript of the Proclamation that was published in a tiny magazine of California history in 1956. The print copy of the relevant issue of the magazine is at the San Francisco Public Library and was scanned and added to the Internet Archive in 2014.

We’ve not yet been able to determine whether the Proclamation was published. What seems clear, though: The existence of the Proclamation flew under the radar between 1861 and 1956; the publication of the manuscript in 1956 made little or no impression; and the Proclamation has continued to fly under the radar for the nearly 70 years since.

We’re delighted to be able to bring it back to the surface now.

One reason why this Proclamation is of interest: It offers a possible clue for explaining the still-undocumented claim that Emperor Norton called for a “League of Nations.”

Also included in this article: Details about the pioneer San Francisco bookseller Jefferson Martenet (1826–1906), whose preservation of the Norton manuscript in a personal scrapbook made it possible for us to find the manuscript in 2022.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Proclamations
tags / privateering, piracy, Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law, international law, Jefferson Martenet, Epes Ellery, Daniel Schley, bookseller, stationer, stationery, printer, California Herald, League of Nations, 1854, 1861, 1862, 1956

Joshua Norton and the McAllister Brothers

July 15, 2022  /  John Lumea

The new HBO series The Gilded Age, from Downton Abbey creator and writer Julian Fellowes, is introducing a new generation to the historical figure of Ward McAllister. Famous for being an arbiter of New York’s “high society” of the 1860s–90s, McAllister used his list of “the 400” to advise Caroline Schermerhorn Astor a.k.a. “Mrs. Astor” on whom should be “in” and whom should be “out.”

But, before arriving in New York in 1858, Ward had spent the dawning years of the 1850s in San Francisco, where he lived in the same house with his older brother Hall McAllister, who arrived in the city in 1849 and remained until his death in 1888 — a period during he which he became of the most eminent and respected attorneys of his generation.

It’s very likely that, in the early 1850s, Joshua Norton — then at the height of his prosperity and influence — socialized with the brothers McAllister in their home, together with his friend Joseph Eastland, a founding partner of the company that went on to become PG&E.

In fact: It was Hall McAllister who — in 1853–54 — represented Joshua’s opponents in the rice affair.

It’s a fascinating set of connections that (a) reveals Joshua Norton to have been a guest — but never really a member — of a world of privilege and power that would become closed to him once his life took a different turn, even as it (b) shines new light on one member of that world who never forgot him.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Hall McAllister, Ward McAllister, Matthew Hall McAllister, Pike Street, attorney, lawyer, judge, The 400, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, Mrs. Astor, Joseph G. Eastland, Joseph Eastland, Ruiz v. Norton, 1849, 1850, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1863, 1865, 1879, 1888, 1895, 1904

Bankrolling the Baker of the Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks

July 10, 2022  /  John Lumea

Many crunchy-snack lovers who bought and enjoyed the Emperor Norton Original San Francisco Sourdough Snacks between 1982 and 2012 will have known little of the Emperor Norton story.

But, Norton initiates and non-initiates alike will know even less about who really made the Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks possible — specifically: Who was the lead venture-capital investor in the product?

As it happens, the partners in the VC firm that led on the Emperor Norton snacks were fresh from having created and developed one of the best–known consumer products and brands in the United States.

Read on for a glimpse into the origin story of the Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks.

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categories / Research, Legacy, Tributes
tags / Emperor Norton Original San Francisco Sourdough Snacks, Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks, Michael G. Berzolheimer, Bill Lanphear, Early Stages Co., Homestead Provisions, Colombo Baking Company, San Francisco French Bread Company, California Cedar Products Company, Cal Cedar, Duraflame, Inc. magazine, 1982, 1984, 2012, Oakland

Emperor Norton's Friend the Butcher

June 20, 2022  /  John Lumea

There are many contemporaneous references to Emperor Norton’s associations with various people and places.

But, the Emperor was a public character. And, the accounts of his engagements with particular people mostly are accounts of conversations and sightings in public places: libraries, lecture halls, churches, saloons, parks, resorts, trains, ferries, streets.

Much rarer are eyewitness reports of Emperor Norton in more intimate settings, such as someone’s home.

Herein, a trace memoir of the Jewish friend who had the Emperor home for dinner on more than one occasion — and documentation of who the friend was.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Abraham Yehl, Josephine Yehl Groeschel, Josephine Groeschel, dinner, butcher, San Francisco directory, U.S. census, business card, Gradwohl & Cohen, Congregation Emanu-El, Temple Emanu-El, Home of Peace, Fanny Yehl, San Francisco Chronicle, 1854, 1858, 1862, 1868, 1915, 1953

A Closer Look at an Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt Medallion

June 14, 2022  /  John Lumea

The Emperor Norton Treasure Hunts, produced by the San Francisco Chronicle between 1953 and 1962, loom large in modern Nortonian lore.

The central symbol and talisman of these treasure hunts is an elaborate 7” medallion. When winning competitors discovered and dug up a plastic version of this medallion, they were gifted with a keepsake bronze “original” that was struck by Shreve & Co., the legendary jeweler established in San Francisco in 1852.

But, it’s never been clear exactly what these medallions looked like — front and back — until now.

New close-up photographs of one of the original 1953 medallions is on the flip.

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categories / Research, Projects, ARENA
tags / Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt, San Francisco Chronicle, Scott Newhall, medallion, Shreve & Co., Palace of Fine Arts, Tilden Park, Dan Sullivan, 1953

Historians of San Francisco Urge Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to Back "Emperor Norton Bridge"

June 02, 2022  /  John Lumea

At the end of May 2022, eight historians of San Francisco sent a letter to former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown urging the Mayor to publicly support The Emperor Norton Trust’s proposal that the California state legislature pass a joint resolution that simply would add “Emperor Norton Bridge” as an honorary name for the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge — leaving in place all existing names and signage for the bridge and its parts, including the “Willie L. Brown, Jr., Bridge” honorific for the West Crossing of the bridge.

The historians joined the Trust’s call that state lawmakers authorize the “Emperor Norton Bridge” naming in 2022 — the 150th anniversary of Emperor Norton’s three newspaper Proclamations setting out the vision for the Bay Bridge in 1872.

Read on for a link to the letter.

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Comment
categories / News, Bay Bridge, Tributes
tags / Emperor Norton Bridge, naming, name, California state legislature, Willie Brown

San Francisco Rice Imports From Late 1852 to Early 1853 Point to Market Specifics of Joshua Norton’s Gambit

May 22, 2022  /  John Lumea

For years, the popular narrative of events leading up Joshua Norton's fateful rice contract of December 1852 has followed the claim of William Drury, in his 1986 biography of Emperor Norton, (1) that Joshua and his partners had connected to the only rice cargo in San Francisco harbor, and (2) that, before that, no rice had been arriving in the city at all.

But, this version of events is not reflected in the daily and weekly reports of rice cargoes that were published in the "Importations" column of the Daily Alta California, one of the city's leading newspapers during this period.

These reports show that the rice cargo that Joshua Norton & Co. contracted for was the largest shipment that had been seen in San Francisco in about a month — but not the only one. In fact, three rice shipments totaling well over 100 barrels had arrived over the previous 10 days. And, shipments of varying sizes had been coming in all along — generally three or four per week.

In other words: There had been a "slow flow" of rice coming in to the city — but not "no flow."

William Drury hyped the severity of the shortage for dramatic effect.

To illustrate the point, the following article includes, from the Daily Alta's "Importations" column, a comprehensive listing of rice cargoes arriving in San Francisco from September 1852 through January 1853 — the period from four months before Joshua Norton, on 22 December 1852, inked his deal with Ruiz, Hermanos, to buy their 200,000-lb. shipload until the Ruiz brothers sued him for non-payment and breach of contract on 21 January 1853.

To our knowledge, this is the first such listing that has been compiled and published in the context of Norton studies.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / San Francisco, rice, imports, cargo, ships, shipping, shortage, Glide, Joshua Norton, Joshua Norton & Co., Ruiz, Ruiz brothers, Ruiz v. Norton, Daily Alta California, Goddefroy & Sillem, William Drury, Allen Stanley Lane, legend, 1852, 1853

Did San Francisco City Government Really Buy Emperor Norton a New Suit?

May 18, 2022  /  John Lumea

For nearly a century, one of the favored “chestnuts” served up in biographical accounts of Emperor Norton has been the claim that, when the Emperor’s uniform became tattered, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors — the City’s elected government — bought him a new one.

It now appears that this undocumented story may have gotten its start in a little book about the Emperor that was published in the late 1920s — nearly 50 years after his death.

But, during the period of Emperor Norton’s reign, 1859–1880, neither San Francisco’s newspapers nor the City’s own Municipal Reports have any record of such official government largesse.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / uniform, regalia, regimentals, suit, coat, clothes, clothing, wardrobe, Board of Supervisors, Albert Dressler, Herbert Asbury, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1863, 1865, 1868, 1869, 1872, 1927, 1933, 1986

The Time Emperor Norton Lost His Platform But Kept His Dignity

April 12, 2022  /  John Lumea

What arguably is one of the most pivotal episodes in Emperor Norton's career has received scant attention.

In December 1870, the Emperor named the Black-owned Pacific Appeal newspaper his "weekly Imperial organ." From then until spring 1875, the Appeal and its editor, Peter Anderson, published some 250 of the Emperor's Proclamations.

But, in May 1875, the Appeal published a Proclamation in which Emperor Norton called out real estate developer Charles Peters for making false promises that were likely to bring harm to the unwitting immigrants who bought his lots in a swampy area at the southern tip of San Francisco that was being billed as Newark.

Peters sued Anderson for libel. Anderson retracted the Proclamation, throwing Emperor Norton under the bus in the process — and forbidding the Emperor from bringing the Appeal any more Proclamations. This is why published Proclamations from the Emperor become much more scarce from mid 1875 until his death in January 1880.

It appears that William Drury, in his 1986 biography of Emperor Norton, was the first to publish anything about this. But, apart from reproducing the offending Proclamation and an excerpt from Anderson's retraction, Drury has only a half-page's worth of sentences to spend on the affair.

In giving the matter such short shrift, Drury side-steps the most important questions: What could have prompted Peter Anderson to break with the Emperor in such a way? And, was Emperor Norton actually right about Charles Peters and his real estate scheme?

In short: Bill Drury leaves a big gap at the very point when big questions need answering.

Drawing on newspaper accounts from 1874–76, the following deep-dive seeks to close the gap and finds that Emperor Norton looks the best of all who were involved — in part, because he was utterly true to himself.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / Newark, Newark Land Company, Newark Land Association, Charles R. Peters, Charles Peters, Pacific Appeal, lawsuit, libel, land, real estate, immigrants, Oakland Tribune, Oakland Daily Transcript, William Drury, 1874, 1875, 1876

Emperor Norton's Proclamations on the Chinese, 1868–1878

March 14, 2022  /  John Lumea

One of Emperor Norton’s most abiding concerns during his reign, 1859–1880, was the unjust treatment of the Chinese. For a period of more than a decade during the second half of his reign, the Emperor flagged his opposition to discrimination against the Chinese in the courts, the workplace and society — and to the physical violence that self-empowered demagogues and thugs on the West Coast meted out on Chinese during the 1860s and ‘70s.

Here, as a resource, are the published Proclamations of Emperor Norton on the Chinese that we’ve discovered so far — as they originally appeared in the papers of the Emperor’s time. There are thirteen Proclamations — plus a reference to a fourteenth.

Almost certainly, this is not an exhaustive list. Many, many issues of newspapers from this period are lost. And, even for the many scanned issues that are included in the current digital databases, the limitations of optical character recognition (OCR) technology mean that even searches on obvious terms like “Norton,” “Emperor,” “Chinese” and “China” don’t produce every possible result.

We’ll continue to add to this list as new information comes to light.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Proclamations
tags / China, Chinese, immigration, courts, labor, society, Denis Kearney, 1868, 1870, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1878

“A New State of Things?” A Pre-Imperial Proclamation from Joshua Norton in July 1859

March 08, 2022  /  John Lumea

On 5 July 1859, Joshua Norton took out a paid ad in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin. The ad was a brief “Manifesto” addressed to the “Citizens of the Union.” It outlined in the broadest terms the national crisis as he saw it and suggested the imperative for action to address this crisis at the most basic level.

This was a little more than two months before Joshua issued his Proclamation — published in the same paper — declaring himself Emperor of the United States on 17 September 1859.

Together with what we already knew — that Joshua Norton continued to run business ads for nearly a year after his insolvency of August 1856; that the San Francisco directories of 1858 and possibly 1859 included listings for him...

The Manifesto is one of three additional pieces of evidence that Joshua Norton remained on the scene — and in San Francisco — in the period between his insolvency and his installation as Emperor.

One of these three traces is an historical “rescue” — reported by Allen Stanley Lane in his 1939 biography of Emperor Norton but apparently forgotten and possibly never documented before now.

The other two — including the Manifesto — are, we believe, discovered, documented and published here for the first time.

This new information should put to rest the conventional wisdom that Joshua Norton "disappeared" for X number of years only to "reemerge" fully transformed on a beatific day in September 1859.

No, there was a process and a path from fall to rise — from Point A to B.

These are three more of that path's public signposts.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Proclamations
tags / manifesto, advertisement, ad, candidate, candidacy, Congress, independent, tax collector, Democratic Party, jury, juror, I. Ferris Waldron, Wells Fargo, directory, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 1855, 1857, 1858, 1859

The Secret History of One of Emperor Norton's Favorite Free-Lunch Haunts

March 04, 2022  /  John Lumea

In his 1986 biography of Emperor Norton, William Drury leaned heavily into anecdotal stories forging an association between the Emperor and Martin & Horton’s, a saloon at the southeast corner of Montgomery and Clay Streets, San Francisco, that was known as a hub for editors and reporters — and also for having one of the better free-lunch counters.

But, it turns out that, in addition to Martin & Horton’s, the building on this corner — which was directly across Clay Street from where the Transamerica pyramid now stands — housed a second saloon — a spot that also was known for its good food and drink, and for catering to the journalists and writers who covered the Emperor in their papers.

Which begs the question: Was Emperor Norton a regular at one saloon? — the other? — or both?

Jumping off from a well-known photograph of the Montgomery and Clay building after it suffered a fire in November 1862, the following research documents in some detail the overlapping histories of these two saloons and their proprietors — whose businesses had space in two different buildings on this corner between 1854 and 1887.

It’s a fascinating story.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Martin & Horton's, Clark Martin, Tom Horton, Faust Cellar, Louis Thiele, George Thiele, Joseph Hug, Montgomery Street, Clay Street, free lunch, 1854, 1857, 1862, 1865, 1870, 1873, 1887

The Emperor of Brooklyn, Part 2

February 18, 2022  /  John Lumea

In 2015, we published a piece, “The Emperor of Brooklyn,” about Emperor Norton’s connection to Brooklyn, Calif., an area southeast of Lake Merritt, in Oakland, that was an independent township from 1856 until it was annexed to Oakland in late 1872.

The main documentary evidence for this connection was a couple of Proclamations that were published in the San Francisco-based Pacific Appeal. The Emperor had designated the Appeal his as his “imperial gazette” in December 1870 — and, ultimately, the paper published some 250 of his Proclamations. But, these particular Proclamations were datelined “Brooklyn.”

It turns out that these and other Proclamations were published simultaneously — sometimes originally — in a short-lived Brooklyn weekly called the Brooklyn Home Journal and Alameda County Advertiser.

Read on to learn about this newspaper; exactly where it was located; Emperor Norton’s visits to the paper’s offices; and the respect the paper paid to the Emperor in 1872.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places, Proclamations
tags / Brooklyn Calif., Oakland, Brooklyn Home Journal, Brooklyn Hall, Walker Street, Thirteenth Avenue, Jackson Street, Eleventh Street, 1871, 1872, 1873

Did Emperor Norton Really Live at the Eureka Lodgings on Commercial Street for 17 Years?

January 14, 2022  /  John Lumea

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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categories / Research, Original sources, Places
tags / San Francisco directories, Metropolitan Hotel, Benton House, Eureka Lodgings, 624 Commercial, Felix Hanlon, Aaron Babcock, David Hutchinson, obituaries, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Morning Call, Daily Alta California, Robert Ernest Cowan, Allen Stanley Lane, David Warren Ryder, William Drury, E Clampus Vitus, 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1867, 1868

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