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.
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The 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."
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The 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.
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One 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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Herb Caen had his reason's for not liking "Frisco." But perhaps they had very little to do with Emperor Norton.
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For all the hundreds of times that we've done a Google image search on "Emperor Norton" here at The Emperor's Bridge Campaign, the Internet still has gifts and surprises for us. Yesterday, it was the following image of a "cabinet card" of the Emperor dated c.1878 and credited to the studio of Bradley & Rulofson, which took many of the most famous photographs of Emperor Norton. We'd never seen this one.
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"As everyone knows, the Emperor Norton I. visits this city every Monday." So wrote the Oakland Tribune newspaper on 30 December 1879, a little more than a week before the Emperor died on 8 January 1880.
Although Emperor Norton often is pigeonholed as a creature of San Francisco, the truth is that he spent quite a bit of time visiting places that were outside the seat of his Empire. Here's a look at two of those places — Oakland and the adjacent Brooklyn, Calif. — as well as two of the Emperor's proclamations that were datelined "Brooklyn."
Images include: the original Oakland Tribune item; archival 1850s-'70s maps of Oakland, Brooklyn and Alameda; and two "Brooklyn proclamations" of 1872. Bonus: The story of The Tom Collins Hoax of 1874.
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Early last month, we ran Eadweard Muybridge's wonderful exterior photograph of the 1866 building of the Mechanics' Institute, where Emperor Norton spent many afternoons, wrote many proclamations and played many games of chess. But the more elusive prize has been a photograph(s) of the building's interior — of the physical spaces that Emperor Norton himself inhabited on all those afternoons, so many years ago.
Happily, we now can close this gap.
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Of the hundreds of Norton-ish folks that we've met over the course of the last year or so, some of those who harbor the deepest fondness for Emperor Norton and his story identify with one of two groups: the Jewish community or numismatists, the latter being the proper term for historians of coin and currency.
Here's a little discovery that brings both groups together — and that advances the case for 1818 as the year of the Emperor's birth.
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The story of those who stood by Emperor Norton at his death in 1880 — and two prominent organizations that did not, when the Emperor was reburied in 1934. Includes images of original archival documents published for the first time.
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On a beautiful if blustery afternoon yesterday in Colma, about 40 friends of Emperor Norton gathered for the laying of a special historical plaque for the Emperor at Home of Peace — the cemetery of Congregation Emanu-El, where the Emperor attended synagogue every Saturday.
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The Emperor's Bridge Campaign is delighted to offer a very important — and very easy — way for those who believe in what we are doing to support the work of the Campaign. You now can make credit and debit card donations to the Campaign on our Web site.
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It long has been known that, upon Emperor Norton's death in January 1880, many of his personal effects — including his regimentals, a hat, his sword and his treasured Serpent Scepter, an elaborate walking stick given him by his subjects in Oregon — went to the Society of California Pioneers (only to be lost 26 years later in the earthquake and fire).
Many, but not all. This week, we discovered archival traces of an early 1880 donation to the Odd Fellows' Library Association of San Francisco. The donation — by David Hutchinson, Emperor Norton's longtime landlord at the Eureka Lodgings — included the stamp the Emperor used to place his seal on his proclamations. It might also have included the Emperor's final proclamation: written and sealed, but not yet delivered and published.
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Emperor Norton was an English Jew. In San Francisco, he attended synagogue services at Congregation Emanu-El every Saturday. But he was never given a Jewish funeral or burial.
Now — 135 years after his death in 1880 — those who admire and revere the Emperor have an opportunity to participate in an afternoon of activities — on Sunday 3 May 2015 — intended to help mend this historical tear in the fabric of the Emperor's story. The ceremonial highlight of the afternoon will be the laying of a special plaque for Emperor Norton at Home of Peace, Emanu-El's cemetery in nearby Colma, Calif.
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The Emperor's Bridge Campaign invites you to a Happy Hour featuring Norton genealogist — and the Emperor's niece — Julie Driver.
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A remarkable 1868 photograph of a San Francisco street scene that would have been very familiar to Emperor Norton.
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Emperor Norton wrote many — possibly even most — of his Proclamations during his regular afternoon visits to the Mechanics' Institute at 31 Post Street, where he also is said to have played a fine game of chess. Here's a look at how the Institute featured in the Emperor's daily life, illustrated by a couple of photographs of the building — including a wonderful shot by the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), who also took the famous 1869 photo of the Emperor astride a bicycle.
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This day in 1863 saw the auction of the furnishings and other contents of the Metropolitan Hotel at the southwest corner of Sansome and Bush Streets, in San Francisco. Emperor Norton had lived here for the past two years. A year or two later — between late summer 1864 and late summer 1865 — the Emperor began living at his best-known residence: the Eureka Lodgings, at 624 Commercial Street. Almost certainly, it was the closing of the Metropolitan that prompted the move towards Commercial Street. But this was not the first time Joshua Norton had lived at this corner.
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Starting sometime between summer 1864 and summer 1865, Emperor Norton occupied a sparsely furnished 9-by-6-foot room on the top floor of a 50-cent-per-night three-story boarding house known as the Eureka Lodgings. A little more than a decade earlier, the pre-imperial Joshua Norton enjoyed accommodation in one of the best hotels in San Francisco. What's surprising is that the difference between the daily rates of the two places appears to have been only about 50 cents.
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You're not likely to encounter a more thoughtful or potent meditation on Emperor Norton and what he means than this.
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