RECENT RESEARCH — A newly unearthed photograph showing the north side of the 600 block of Commercial Street, San Francisco, in the aftermath of the earthquake and fires of 1906 reveals, for the first time, visual evidence of the fate of the building that housed the Eureka Lodgings, where Emperor Norton lived from 1864–65 until his death in 1880. Our analysis of the photo sharpens the focus on the identities and locations of the buildings along this stretch — and exactly what each building suffered in 1906. Includes our highly researched new infographic that can be used as a tool for understanding the history of this location.

The Emperor Norton Trust

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

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: market

1870s Forecasts of a Market for Emperor Norton Photographs & Signatures

February 18, 2024  /  John Lumea

In 1872 — two years before the first commercially retailed photographic portrait of Emperor Norton — an editor in Oakland wondered whether there might be a market for photographs of the Emperor and how much collectors might be willing to pay.

Five years later, in 1877, a San Francisco paper carried an editorial on the prices paid at a recent New York sale of autographs of U.S. presidents, European monarchs, and other notables. The writer observed that Emperor Norton's signatures were "going at a low rate" and suggested that this would remain the case with the Emperor’s ongoing sales of signed promissory notes continuing to glut the market — but that, in the future, the Emperor’s signature could become a more precious commodity.

In light of the four- and five-figure sums now commanded by photographs and signed promissory notes of Emperor Norton, it’s worth noting these two early — and, we believe, previously unreported — indicators that, even during the Emperor’s lifetime, there were those who saw that the Emperor eventually could find his way to the collector’s market.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / photograph, signature, autograph, currency, promissory note, market, collector, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, Oakland Daily Transcript, Heritage Auctions, Bonhams, 1872, 1874, 1875, 1877

Lewis Wharf, Boston's Gateway to Joshua Norton's New World

February 06, 2023  /  John Lumea

When Joshua Norton arrived in Boston on 12 March 1846, the packet ship Sunbeam that had carried him from Liverpool docked at Lewis Wharf.

Probably the first structure that Joshua saw when he stepped off the ship was the wharf's market building — an impressive, long, 4-plus-story gabled edifice of timber and local Quincy granite that had been built ten years earlier, in 1836.

Although no longer being put to the same uses that it was in the 1830s and '40s, that signature building still stands on Lewis Wharf — and perhaps is the only non-California place in the United States that the once and future Emperor is documented to have passed through.

Read on for a brief but richly illustrated history of Lewis Wharf and its signature building — including the wharf's deep ties to one of the most legendary figures in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States of which Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor.  

Plenty of documentary goodies here: Engravings, photographs, plans, maps and newspaper clippings from 1772 to the present.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Boston, Sunbeam, Enoch Train, Lewis Wharf, Lewis Wharf Company, Commercial Street (Boston), Atlantic Avenue (Boston), building, market, warehouse, granite, gable, Thomas Lewis, Samuel Shaw Lewis, Thomas Hancock, John Hancock, Hancock Wharf, plan, map, 1764, 1772, 1775, 1789, 1795, 1828, 1832, 1834, 1836, 1837, 1838, 1846, 1870, 1877, 1884, 1904, 1920s, 1950s, 1960s, 1973

© 2025 The Emperor Norton Trust  |  Site design: Alisha Lumea  |  Background: Original image courtesy of Erica Fischer