Rare Traces of a Transitional Address

ON 8 JANUARY 1863, the Society of California Pioneers dedicated its new Pioneer Hall, at the northeast corner of Montgomery and Gold Streets, in San Francisco.

The Society built its new headquarters and clubhouse on land that had been donated to the Society by member James Lick (1796–1876).

The building was the Society’s first purpose-built, freestanding Pioneer Hall — but not its first Pioneer Hall.

After Lick donated the land, the Society in March 1862 appointed a 3-member committee to explore options for a new building. Later that Spring, the committee produced a report that made the case — in part, by taking aim at the Society’s current accommodations:

The disagreeable digs to which the Society’s building committee alluded…

ill ventilated, worse lighted, dark, dilapidated, and dingy. Located...immediately over one of the most disgusting and indecent establishments that disgrace the city — which, beside making a pandemonium nightly of the building, from its ear-splitting noises, contributes also to the atmosphere of the Society’s rooms, an agglomeration of offensive stenches reeking with pestilential odors, to which it would be hard to find a parallel....render[ing] it repulsive to every man of ordinary sensibilities

…was the original Pioneer Hall, on the second floor of the Bella Union theater building.

The Bella Union was on Washington Street, just west of Kearny Street — on the north side of Portsmouth Square.

Apparently, the Pioneers took up residence here in early 1856. A meeting notice in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of 21 April 1856 referred to “the new Hall of the Society, the second story of the Bella Union, on Portsmouth Square”:

**Society of California Pioneers ad for upcoming meeting at the Society’s “new Hall,”** San Francisco *Daily Evening Bulletin*, 21 April 1856, p. 2. Source: Genealogy Bank

For the first several years after establishing in fall 1850, the Society of California Pioneers met in the offices of its members or in spaces borrowed or rented from other organizations.

But, briefly, starting in July 1855, the Society had its own “rooms” above the Pioneer Bookstore (Marvin & Hitchcock), at 168 Montgomery Street — on the east side of Montgomery, just north of Washington.

At the end of November 1855, the Society ran an ad that referred to these rooms as its “Hall.”

**Society of California Pioneers ad for upcoming meeting at 168 Montgomery Street,”** *Daily Alta California*, 21 November 1855, p. 2. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

But, the upstairs Bella Union space the Society of California Pioneers took over shortly after that is the first organizational home the Society occupied for long enough to give a proper name — “Pioneer Hall” — that also was adopted and used by the people and press of San Francisco.

Here’s how the Bella Union building looked in 1856. Note the signage across the top of the building.

**View to the northeast across Portsmouth Square, San Francisco, 1856.** Photograph by George R. Fardon (1806–1886). Kearny Street runs along the right, while Washington Street runs along the front of the Bella Union. Collection of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. Source: Calisphere

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IT IS AGAINST THIS BACKDROP that Joshua Norton — who will declare himself “Emperor of the United States” three years later, in 1859 — is listed in Samuel Colville’s San Francisco directory of 1856 with an “office” at Pioneer Hall.

**Listing for Joshua Norton**, *Colville’s San Francisco Directory*, 1856. Collection of the San Francisco Public Library. Source: Internet Archive

The directory was published in October 1856 — so, Joshua likely provided his information sometime that summer.

This was an extremely difficult and fraught period for Joshua Norton. After he lost his rice contract appeal in the California Supreme Court in October 1854, the banks foreclosed on his numerous property mortgages in 1855, and he finally was forced to declare bankruptcy in August 1856.

It stands to reason that — with so much pulled out from under him — Joshua’s living arrangements were fluid, and that he wasn’t able to say with confidence for how long he would be “resident” at any given location. So, it’s easy to see why he might have looked to an apparently stable — and centrally located — fraternal association for ballast.

By August 1856, Joshua had been affiliated with Occidental Lodge No. 22 of Free and Accepted Masons for two years and would remain in good standing for another couple. Masonic Hall was in the 100 block of Montgomery Street. One might wonder why he didn’t use Masonic Hall as his address. Did he request permission to do that and was rejected?

In the Prefatory to his 1856 directory, Samuel Colville writes, with apparent pride, of his determination at the outset that the directory "should contain, not only the names and residences of the citizens, with the ordinary data usually included in such registers, but that it should also contain, arranged in a concise and systematic manner, a brief review of the history of the city, short biographical notices and sketches of its institutions, enterprises, etc...." [emphasis mine]:

**Excerpt from Prefatory to *Colville’s San Francisco Directory*, 1856**, p. iii. Collection of the San Francisco Public Library. Source: Internet Archive

Later in the Preface, Colville notes the “refusal, in numerous instances, of persons to give their names or the names of others, partners or inmates with them, fearing consequences, in reference to taxation or jury duty, if their names and residences were given [emphasis mine]:

**Excerpt from Prefatory to *Colville’s San Francisco Directory*, 1856**, p. iv. Collection of the San Francisco Public Library. Source: Internet Archive

This second passage suggests a more evasive reason why Joshua might not have wanted to have his residence made public.

Either way, it appears that the biographical tagline in Joshua’s 1856 listing — “Established November, 1849” — was courtesy of Colville.

This little detail dovetails nicely with the Pioneers. Under the constitution of The Society of California Pioneers, the most basic requirement for membership was that one be a male who had arrived in California before 1850. Joshua had landed in San Francisco in late 1849, so — in theory — he was eligible for membership.

The Society’s records do not show that Joshua Norton ever was formally a member.

So, if the Pioneers did indeed provide Joshua the accommodation of allowing him to use Pioneer Hall — if only as a place to receive mail and messages — even though he wasn't formally a member, that would have reflected well on the Society.

It also would suggest at least that he had friends there.

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AN 1857 DIRECTORY FOR SAN FRANCISCO — Colville’s or otherwise — is not extant.

So, it’s possible that Joshua Norton was using Pioneer Hall as a “business address” in 1857, too.

By 1858, Henry Langley’s first San Francisco directory listed Joshua as living in a boarding house at 255 Kearny Street between Broadway and Vallejo.

But, in May 1857, the Daily Alta published a “sign” that the Society of California Pioneers had decided to remain on Portsmouth Square a little while longer:

This photograph from 1861 shows the change. It appears the sign was “PIONEER,” singular. *

**View from Kearny and Sacramento Streets, San Francisco, showing north perimeter of Portsmouth Square with Pioneer Hall on Washington Street, 1861.** Photographer unknown. Park Archives of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Source: OpenSFHistory / wnp71.0367

Here’s a detail:

And a later view by Lawrence & Houseworth, taken in 1866, after the Pioneers had left the building (click to zoom and see the “PIONEER” sign):

**View of Portsmouth Square to the northeast, 1866.** Photographer by Lawrence & Houseworth. Collection of the Society of California Pioneers. Source: Calisphere

Did Joshua Norton collect mail and messages at Pioneer Hall in the second half of 1857?

If so, perhaps he occasionally noticed the new sign as he approached the building.

And, perhaps, in viewing the sign, he took some comfort in a title that must have served him well over the next couple of years before he was able to acquire the title that everyone one would use — even if he spoke this earlier title only to himself:

Joshua Norton. Pioneer.

* The San Francisco Public Library (and possibly other archives) have photographs of Portsmouth Square with the “Bella Union” sign that are dated to 1858. The documentation here of a new “PIONEER” sign on the Bella Union theater building by the end of May 1857, together with photographs dated 1861 and 1866 that show the building with the “PIONEER” sign, may be new information that helps to date photographs of the Bella Union building with a “Bella Union” sign as being no later than late May 1857.

If the “PIONEER” sign was changed to anything else after the Lawrence & Houseworth photograph of 1866 — by which time the Pioneers long since had vacated to the new Pioneer Hall they built at Montgomery and Gold Streets in 1863 — it likely was not “Bella Union,” as the theater’s proprietor, Sam Tetlow, already was building the New Bella Union around the corner on Kearny Street by 1868.

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