TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON
RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY
Much of the relevant background is in the title.
The rare, fine-grained, wonderfully textured photograph, a stereoview, is by J.J. Reilly.
It's beautiful.
What's left is to get your bearings and see the view — which you can do by clicking below!
Published accounts of the young Joshua Norton living in South Africa in his 20s — including the accounts presented by Norton’s major biographers — more or less universally treat Joshua as though he were a romantic hero (or a loner) forging both (a) his views on religion and (b) his desire to leave South Africa within an hermetically sealed vacuum occupied by him, his parents and possibly his two nearest siblings, Louis and Philip.
In this interpretation, Joshua is the only sibling who is asked to answer for apparently having rejected the Jewish faith of his childhood as a young man. Louis, Philip and other siblings are given a pass, because they are regarded as having had an alibi: marrying a “Gentile” in a place where there were few Jews to choose from.
But, who’s to say that these siblings didn’t entitle themselves to marry outside the faith, in part because they, like Joshua, already were pulling away? Norton biographer Bill Drury even goes so far as to say that Joshua’s young adult mockery of Judaism was the first sign of his “madness.” But Drury doesn’t brand Joshua’s fraternal siblings, Louis and Philip, as “mad” for not marrying “a nice Jewish girl” and for getting baptized to boot.
In the following generation, most (all?) of the siblings’ children — presumably with the encouragement and blessing of their parents — were baptized and married by the Anglican Church. So, even if Joshua’s Jewish siblings initially “went Anglican” as “a marriage thing,” their assimilation into the Anglican tradition doesn’t appear to have ended there.
Too: In the prevailing interpretation, Joshua’s primary motivation for leaving South Africa is that his parents and his brothers, Louis and Philip, had died between 1846 and 1848, leaving unmarried Joshua to collect a big inheritance check and catch the first ship to San Francisco.
This wishful version of events falls apart, as soon as one realizes that Joshua’s father, John, was declared insolvent as early as 1844 — and that Joshua actually left Cape Town in late 1845, before his parents and brothers had died.
So, one has to look to other sources to help explain Joshua’s “moves” during this period.
One option — and where existing accounts fail — is to recognize that Joshua was one of a dozen siblings — several of whom, in the late 1830s and early 1840s, were hammering out their own attitudes and actions on “religion and travel” at the same time that Joshua was.
It stands to reason that Joshua was influenced by the choices his siblings were making in these areas. Perhaps Joshua and one or two of these siblings confided to one another about all this. A fully realized narrative of Joshua’s life during this period has to position him within this sibling dynamic.
The truth is that Joshua Norton was not the only one of his siblings who put some distance between themselves and the Jewish faith of their childhood — and who also got it together to leave South Africa.
He wasn’t even the first — or the last.
Read MoreEmperor Norton biographer William Drury made the grandiose claim, in 1986, that the first theatrical depiction of Emperor Norton took place on 17 September 1861 — the second anniversary of the Emperor’s self-declaration in 1859 — and that this was the inaugural production of the theater itself, which opened on this date.
This isn’t true. And, that’s putting it mildly.
But, as born out by historical newspaper documents from 1860 and 1861 — probably getting their first truly public broadcast here — what is true is interesting on its own.
Read MoreDid you know that, when Joshua Norton was living in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in the early 1840s, he did a stint as an auctioneer? We didn’t!
Every new dot makes the picture a little sharper.
Read MoreTwo of the most basic modern assumptions about the locations and business enterprises of Joshua Norton in 1852 San Francisco appear not to bear scrutiny.
The assumptions — that Joshua Norton held forth from facilities that he “built” on 3 of the 4 corners of Sansome and Jackson Streets, and that one of these facilities was a rice mill — were espoused and may, in part, have been created by Norton’s 1986 biographer, William Drury.
But, Drury’s claims were undocumented. A deep-dive into the documentary record points to a different picture.
In recent years, there have been several claims on social media and elsewhere that Emperor Norton’s funeral in 1880 took place on the northeast corner of Bagley Place and O'Farrell Street, in San Francisco — on (or nearest to) the site of a building, still standing, that opened in 1910 as a bank; that in the last decade has housed an Emporio Armani store; and that today is home to the Museum of Ice Cream.
The temptation to connect this site to the Emperor’s funeral is understandable. The heavy, domed, stone-clad, temple-like edifice that now occupies the site has more than a touch of the funereal. Until very recently, the building had on the O’Farrell Street side medieval-looking, vault-like wooden doors that only added to the effect.
But, most likely, Emperor Norton’s funeral was across the street.
Read MoreFrom late 1862 / early 1863 until his death in January 1880, Emperor Norton lived at the Eureka Lodgings — a kind of 19th-century SRO located at 624 Commercial Street, on the north side of Commercial between Montgomery and Kearny Streets, in San Francisco.
There is a handful of 1860s–1880s photographs, taken from across Montgomery or Kearny, that show distant views of the 600 block of Commercial Street.
What we’d never seen, though, is a photo of the 600 block of Commercial taken during the Emperor’s lifetime — taken from within the block — and showing the real, intimate flavor of the section of the street where Emperor Norton lived.
Our discovery, hidden in plain sight, is a c.1876 photograph apparently taken by Eadweard Muybridge.
A bonus: The photo appears to reveal a glimpse of the Eureka Lodgings itself.
If we’re right about this, we may have produced the first-ever visual ID of photographic evidence of the Emperor’s residence.
Kind of a big deal.
Read MoreA fondly regarded public artwork — a mural-sized rendering of Emperor Norton in bottle caps — came on the scene in The Mission, San Francisco, in late 2011.
It left quietly a few months ago.
Photographs and Google street views from 2009 to the present document the rise, fade and fall.
Read MoreThe Emperor Norton mural in The Pied Piper, at the Palace Hotel, in San Francisco — painted by the city’s longtime “artist laureate,” Antonio Sotomayor (1904–1985) — is one of the best-known and -loved Emperor-themed works of art.
A newly discovered art-historical survey done for the San Francisco Arts Commission in 1953 offers an elusive date for the painting — and a new way of seeing it.
Includes rarely seen photographs.
Read MoreHere, we document our discovery of something we’ve never seen reported elsewhere: Emperor Norton’s attendance and participation at a “no party” political meeting held at the Mercantile Library, San Francisco, on 13 July 1875.
The Emperor’s role is included in next-day accounts from two San Francisco newspapers — the Daily Evening Bulletin and the Daily Alta California — as well as in a San Francisco dispatch that appeared in the Los Angeles Evening Express.
Read MoreBetween 1926 and 1932, local, state and federal authorities in San Francisco; Oakland; California; and Washington, D.C., leaned in to an intense process for determining how best to create a transbay vehicular and rail bridge linking Oakland and San Francisco.
There were at least four major studies focusing solely on the bridge issue or, in one case, the bridge as part of broader regional transportation concerns.
Three of these studies — in 1926, 1927, and 1930 — included the specific location and route that Emperor Norton backed in 1872: Oakland to San Francisco via Goat Island, with a San Francisco landing at Telegraph Hill.
All three of these studies shortlisted two options that, between them, included these features: (1) direct connections between the traffic centers of Oakland and San Francisco; (2) a “hinge” at Goat Island (Yerba Buena Island); and (3) a San Francisco landing at Rincon Hill.
The 1930 study was the first to include an option that put all these features into one location and route — the one that eventually was built.
Read on for the Big Picture story of how it all came together — including the top-line maps, produced for these studies at the time, that illustrate the evolution of the design of the Emperor Norton Bridge.
Read MoreThe two book-length biographies of Emperor Norton, published in 1939 and 1986, mention “the undertakers” and “the undertaking rooms.” But, a blind spot in Norton studies has been that there was a specific firm — with a name and an address — that provided funeral and burial services for the Emperor, including manufacturing the oft-mentioned rosewood and silver-trimmed casket.
We know that the Emperor’s old friend, James G. Eastland, and friends of Eastland’s at the Pacific Club raised the money and made the arrangements — but, rarely mentioned is who was on the other side of the contract.
The obituaries didn’t name the firm. And, the name appears to have been mentioned only a couple of times by later writers — in 1946 and again in 1974. But, even these were only passing mentions.
Here, we rescue from obscurity the name and the early history of a business that played a crucial role in giving Emperor Norton a fitting farewell.
Read MoreJoin The Emperor’s Bridge Campaign and the Comstock Saloon in our celebration of Empire Day — the anniversary of Joshua Norton’s public declaration of himself as Emperor on 17 September 1859.
Read MoreAn abiding concern of Emperor Norton was for the welfare of immigrants. The Emperor issued numerous Proclamations and took other actions in the defense and support of specific immigrant communities — notably, the Chinese, German and French.
More broadly, Emperor Norton wanted to ensure that the basic needs of arriving immigrants be met. This included his determination that cash-poor immigrants have enough money to get started in their new country.
His concern for the financial security of immigrants was evident at least as early as November 1867, when he issued a brief Proclamation that appeared in the San Francisco Examiner.
Read MoreHe’s a two-time Grammy Award winner — for co-writing “After the Love Is Gone” (Earth, Wind & Fire) and “Turn Your Love Around” (George Benson).
As a solo artist, he had his own minor hit in 1981 with “Sara.”
In the 1970s and ‘80s, he was one of the most in-demand backing vocalists in Los Angeles, appearing on hundreds of recordings, including by: Elton John, Al Jarreau, Lou Rawls, Nancy Wilson, George Benson, The Tubes, Patti LaBelle, Neil Diamond, Donna Summer, Barry Manilow, Kim Carnes, Kenny Rogers and on and on
His cover of the 1967 Ray Charles tune, "In the Heat of the Night,” was used as the opening theme for the television series that ran from 1988 to 1995.
For nearly 30 years, from 1981 to 2009, he was a member — and was instrumental in the rebirth — of one of the best-known and longest-running bands of all time.
And, he is widely recognized as being one of the best vocalists in rock.
But, it was his great-great grandparents who had the real connections in the family.
Read on for the whole story.
In his original Proclamation of 17 September 1859, Emperor Norton summonsed “the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of February next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.”
Alas, Musical Hall was destroyed in a fire on 23 January 1860 — just a week before the appointed date.
The Emperor quickly rescheduled his meeting, issuing a Proclamation on January 28th revising the date and the venue to “the 5th day of February next, in Assembly Hall, on Kearny street, of this city.”
This is the secret history of the would-be site of Emperor Norton’s national convention of February 1860 — and of the woman who gave the building its original name.
Read MoreIn April 1875, Emperor Norton issued one of his most important Proclamations on the welcome, sympathy, assistance, protection and care of immigrants.
Thirty years later, in September 1908, this Proclamation was bumped to the top of the pile, when the Emperor’s portraitist Addie Ballou included it — unsourced — in a brief memoir of her experience of the Emperor that she wrote for the San Francisco Call.
Alas, the Proclamation has languished in unmentioned obscurity for most of the last 110 years — not least, because it has not been publicly sourced and documented as authentic.
This, we do here.
Read MoreEmperor Norton’s on-point attendance at an early event of the Order of Freedom’s Defenders — a Unionist-Republican political club dedicated to preserving Lincoln's legacy; advancing Reconstruction; electing Grant as President; and securing the Constitutional protections necessary to guarantee the civil rights of African-Americans — can be seen as “of a piece” with the Emperor’s broader commitment to African-American equality.
Read MoreIn spring 1961, two establishments opened in San Francisco.
One was a hotel bar on Geary Street. The other was a lunch spot and cocktail lounge on Maiden Lane.
Both were less than two blocks from Union Square.
One was created by a designer who went on to be celebrated in the pages of the Architectural Digest. It had an "Emperor Norton" doorman. And, per Herb Caen, it once was host to Jack Dempsey and Lefty O'Doul — sharing a bowl of peanuts on the same night.
The other was home to a new portrait of the Emperor commissioned by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Both were called the Emperor Norton Room.
Here’s the intriguing story of two Nortonian stars that briefly rose and just as quickly fell in the same San Francisco season.
Read MoreIn 1860, the prominent African-American editor and civil rights activist Philip Alexander Bell arrived in San Francisco from New York City to take up the editor’s chair at the San Francisco Mirror of the Times newspaper —the intellectual and political heartbeat of the emerging movement for African-American equality in California.
One of Bell’s earliest editorial items — published on 20 August of that year — was about Emperor Norton. Within a matter of hours, the Emperor responded in writing, and Bell published the note the following day under the headline “A Pacific Proclamation.”
Twenty months later, Bell would join Peter Anderson, a founder of the Mirror, in converting the paper to a new African-American weekly called The Pacific Appeal. At the end of 1870, Emperor Norton named the Appeal his imperial gazette; and, over the next four-and-a-half years, Anderson, as editor, published some 250 of the Emperor’s proclamations — including his many decrees recognizing the humanity and rights, and demanding fairness and equality, for marginalized and immigrant people, specifically: the Chinese, Native Americans and African-Americans,
The fact that Emperor Norton responded to Philip Bell in 1860 — and what he said — tells us much about the Emperor.
We believe this is the first modern publication of the images and full texts of Bell’s editorial and the Emperor’s reply.
Read More