 Henry Wager HalleckAs a follow-up to last month's excellent history of the Montgomery Block, it is appropriate to consider the life and career of Henry Halleck, the builder of the Block. He is memorialized by a statue in Golden Gate Park, by Halleck Street between Leidesdorff and Front Streets, and by Halleck Street in the Presidio, from Lincoln Blvd. to Crissy Field. The Halleck monument stands on the south side of JFK Drive in the Park, near the tennis courts, perennially shaded by a grove of coast live oak trees and a towering cypress. The inscription on the monument reads "Tribute To His Memory, from his best friend, Gen. George Callum, 1886." The sculptor was Carl Conrads..... |
• Norton I, Famous for Being Well-Known  Norton I, Famous for Being Well-KnownCelebrity is a capricious state in that, while many seek the public eye, few catch and hold it. Consider Joshua Norton, the self-styled Emperor of the United States and erstwhile Protector of Mexico. The fast and easy analysis–maybe crazy, maybe not so crazy, but everybody in San Francisco loved him just the same! The Cranky Historian suggests that a closer look helps explain this supposedly universal municipal "love." A few well-documented facts: • Joshua Norton was a successful merchant in the gold rush and a member of the first Vigilance Committee. • He lost all when the bottom fell out of the rice market. • He returned to public attention after..... |
• James Lick, Miser and Philanthropist  James Lick, Miser and PhilanthropistMiserly, selfish, reclusive, “touched in the head,” – but absolutely honest and an astute business-man. This is what James Lick’s contemporaries thought of the eccentric, disagreeable Gold Rush pioneer who, at the end of his long life, astonished them by using his millions to benefit his adopted state. Lick’s Beginnings Born in rural Pennsylvania in 1796, James Lick learned fine cabinetmaking from his father, and from his mother inherited a passion for gardening. He fell in love with the daughter of the local miller, and when she became pregnant with his child he sought her hand in marriage. The rude rebuff he received from her father would mark Lick for life: the wealthy miller ridicu..... |
• Adolph Sutro Travels to California (Part 1)  Adolph Sutro Travels to California (Part 1)Young Adolph Sutro, barely twenty years old, arrived in New York from Prussia in October 1850. He was the first of his band of seven brothers to arrive, and the second oldest. After learning all he could about the Gold Rush from the California-bound gold-seekers, the brash but perceptive Adolph decided abruptly, just a few days after his arrival, to go to California. He boarded the steamer Cherokee on October 12th. The first of his many letters to his brothers is dated Wednesday, October 30, from Panama; they assumed he was still in New York. (The voluminous letters, edited and paired with unattributed translations from the German, are found in the collection of the Sutro Library in San ..... |
• San Francisco's Shanghai Kelly  San Francisco's Shanghai KellyIn the black trade of “shanghaiing” sailors from San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, one man’s infamous villainy earned him the label “King of the Crimps.” Known by all as Shanghai Kelly, he was a short, slovenly, man with unkempt flaming red hair and beard and a fierce temper. Born James Kelly in Ireland in 1820, he joined the Gold Rush to California in 1848. Kelly soon set himself up in business with a sailors’ boardinghouse at 33 Pacific Street, the heart of the Barbary Coast. This was the perfect set-up for his real money-maker, filling the “orders” of sea captains desperate for sailors to man their ships sailing on from San Francisco. In the years after the Gold Rush, with hundreds of shi..... |
• Adolph Sutro in Panama (Part 2)  Adolph Sutro in Panama (Part 2)In Jack Leibman's series of articles culled from Sutro’s letters - here he takes up the tale of Sutro’s journey to San Francisco after the steamer Cherokee from New York deposits him in the port of Chagres on the Caribbean coast of Panama. As always, Adolph provides vivid descriptions of his experiences. The exotic natives of Chagres in Panama number about 1500 and seem to be a mixture of brown and black. "They are very lazy and passionately fond of smoking, especially the women. Nearly every girl has a cigar in her mouth or sticks it behind her ear like a pen. Men and women are clad from the hips down or not at all, and have no shame. Some women are dressed in fine ..... |
 Chagres TravelersPeople bound for California from New York or New Orleans generally sailed to the port of Chagres in Panama, then traveled overland 60 miles through jungle and over mountains to reach the Pacific Ocean and await a ship to transport them north. The harbor was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1502. For three centuries under Spanish rule, the village was considered unhealthy and unruly. When tens of thousands of gold-seekers landed there on their way to California, the village did not have the resources—including sanitation or police—to handle all the people. The biggest dangers included robbery and insect- and water-born diseases such as Chagres or Panama fever (yellow fever), malaria,..... |
• Adolph Sutro Slogs Through Panama (Part 3)  Adolph Sutro Slogs Through Panama (Part 3)This is the third in a series of articles tracing German immigrant Adolph Sutro’s 1850 journey by ship from New York to California via the isthmus of Panama. City Guide Jack Leibman has drawn this description from Sutro’s letters found in the collection of the Sutro Library. His tale resumes after he has spent a miserable night in a canoe, besieged by mosquitoes and drenched by rain. Today's scenery again features thick forests, trees lying across the river, and isolated huts. At noon, a “disgusting” lunch table is encountered, covered with flies, little worms, and ants. Then a terrible drenching thunderstorm occurs before the next station, which is furnished with two huts. Abou..... |
 Honest Harry MeiggsOf the many dreamers, promoters, and con men who built Gold Rush San Francisco, perhaps none was as hard-working and well-liked as Henry “Honest Harry” Meiggs. Born in 1811 in New York, by his mid-twenties Harry had managed, through his own energy and abilities, to purchase a lumber mill in present-day Brooklyn. Caught by a business downturn in the 1840s, Meiggs joined the throngs heading West. But before departing, the resourceful lumberman used his remaining funds to purchase a sailing vessel and load it up with lumber to ship around the Horn. Arriving in San Francisco in January 1849, he fetched a fabulous price for his cargo. With his profits he built a sawmill and a small wharf..... |
• Adolph Sutro Arrives in SF (Part 4)  Adolph Sutro Arrives in SF (Part 4)City Guide Jack Leibman, a volunteer at the Sutro Library, has been sharing with GuideLines readers descriptions from the letters of German immigrant Adolph Sutro about his 1850 journey from New York to San Francisco. The previous installment featured Sutro’s description of his dreadful passage across the isthmus of Panama. In this fourth and final installment, Sutro, after further adventures, at last reaches his destination. After six steamy, disagreeable days in Panama, on November 1, 1850, for $300, Adolph boarded the California bound..... |
• Talbot Green and His Green Street  Talbot Green and His Green Street Running from the Embarcadero to the Presidio, Green Street was named in William Eddy’s 1849 survey of San Francisco. But just who is the Green of Green Street? Like many of San Francisco’s earliest settlers, he was not who he seemed. Talbot Green came west in the spring of 1841 in the first immigrant party to travel over the Sierras to California. The arduous journey of this group of forty-eight settlers who set off together from Independence, Missouri, was chronicled in the diary kept by their secretary, John Bidwell. After surviving the grueling journey, Green traveled to Monterey and joined Thomas Larkin as a junior partner, conducting business on Larkin’s behalf in Los Angeles and ..... |
• Black Bart and Clean Handkerchiefs  Black Bart and Clean Handkerchiefs
Charles Bowles – aka Charles Bolton, C. E. Boles, Black Bart, and Po8 – robbed twenty-seven Wells Fargo stagecoaches between 1875 and 1883. A resident of Second Street in San Francisco, he would travel to Stockton, California, walk into the mountains, and later appear on roads where stagecoaches traveled. After each robbery, he left behind a poem. Black Bart wore a light-colored overgarment covering his clothes, a flour sack over his head, and a derby hat on top of it. His first poem, written on a waybill and left weighted by a stone on top of a tree stump, appeared after Bart robbed a stage in Sonoma County. "I've labored long and hard for bread and honor and for riches But on my c..... |
 Crocker’s Spite FenceIf you look up “spite fence” in the Wikipedia you will read: “A spite fence is an overly tall fence typically constructed between adjacent lots by a property owner who is annoyed with, or wishes to annoy, a neighbor or who wishes to completely obstruct the view between lots.” Just below the definition you see a picture of the top of Nob Hill before 1906 that includes one of the most famous (or shall we say infamous?) spite fences ever built. picture1right300 The story has been told a number of ways, but generally goes like this. Charles Crocker, one of the “Big Four” partners in the Central Pacific Railroad, had become a multi- millionaire and wanted to build a mansion at the to..... |
 John W. GearyThe following are excerpts from Rand Richards’ newest book, Mud, Blood and Gold - San Francisco in 1849. All throughout the year 1849, thousands of people poured into San Francisco “like bees to a swarming.” One of those was John White Geary. Geary, for whom Geary Boulevard and Street are named, spent only three years in San Francisco but he looms large in the City’s early history. picture1left300 Geary was born in western Pennsylvania in 1819. His penniless father died when he was 14, forcing young Geary to leave school to work to support his widowed mother. He put himself through college and studied law and civil engineering. During the Mexican War, he served as a ..... |
• Izzy Gomez’ Café in San Francisco  Izzy Gomez’ Café in San FranciscoPortuguese-born Isadore Gomez was a Barbary Coaster with a different tack than most. Izzy always followed his heart rather than a quick buck. He opened Isadore Gomez’ Café in 1930 at 848 Pacific Street, a somewhat rundown café focusing on the new Bohemian movement and its artists. Three principles ruled Izzy’s life: “When you don’t know what to say, say nothing”; “Life is a long road, take it easy”; “When you come to a pool of water on that long road, don’t make it muddy; maybe you’ll pass there again, and you’ll be thirsty.” Izzy’s Café was a gathering place for aspiring artists. Famed writer William Saroyan, himself a regular at Izzy’s, immortalized the place, its characters and the..... |
• David Warren and the Suicide Club  David Warren and the Suicide Club“Members must agree to set their worldly affairs in order to enter into the REAL world of chaos, cacophony, and dark saturnalia, and they must further agree to live each day as though it were their last, for it may BE. The club will explore the untravelled, exotic, miasmal, and exhilarating experiences of life: deserted cemeteries, storms, caving, haunted houses, Nazi bars, fanatical movements, hot air ballooning, stunts, exposes, impersonation. The Club will be ongoing for the rest of our lives.” This was the agreement among the founding members of the San Francisco Suicide Club in 1977. One of those founders, and a long-time friend of City Guides, David Warren, died in Januar..... |
 Sewer WalkEven now, nearly 30 years later, it's difficult to define the Suicide Club, but certainly challenging mindless tradition was one goal. So was balancing "the hype" - providing an alternative platform for thoughts on current events. And, of course, there were adventures that conquer fears. On this particular night, we all dressed up, in tuxedos and ballgowns, with rubber waders, and gathered on Grove Street at the entrance to Davies Hall where we mingled with the "swells" who were arriving for the symphony opening night performance. We watched as the line of limos disgorged their satin- and lace-wrapped riders; waved as they dashed up the steps and into the concert hall. Then we turned t..... |
• Leonard Borchardt's “Oofty Goofty”  Leonard Borchardt's “Oofty Goofty”Leonard Borchardt's first glimpse of America was brief. The fourteen year old stowaway from Berlin was discovered en route to the new world by the Captain of the SS Fresia. He was forced to stay on the ship, join the crew to earn his passage, return to Germany and back again to the United States, before being allowed to disembark in New York. From there Borchardt drifted from state to state before signing up for the U.S. Cavalry in Detroit. After learning he would be fighting Native American Indians who might scalp him - Borchardt deserted, sold his horse and gun to a farmer, and headed for San Francisco. He arrived in 1884 at the age of 22. Borchardt would try any crazy scheme for..... |
• Coffee Dan’s - Most Popular SF Speakeasy  Coffee Dan’s - Most Popular SF SpeakeasyNo one should forget San Francisco’s riotous Coffee Dan’s. The original club opened in 1879 as a cabaret located in the basement below Daniel Davis’ restaurant on the southeast corner of Sutter and Kearny. After the earthquake and fire of 1906, Dan moved his club to Powell and O’Farrell Streets. Like its predecessor, it opened for breakfast, serving customers long past dinner with entertainers that belied the apparent low station of the café. Posh city magazine The Wasp proclaimed Coffee Dan’s the rendezvous for San Francisco’s elite in their May 20, 1916 issue. picture1left250 Dan died in 1917 and son John Davis took over management. It was Prohibition and Coffee Dan’s was now..... |
• Literary Industries: Chasing a Vanishing West  Literary Industries: Chasing a Vanishing WestHubert Howe Bancroft is primarily remembered today as the originator of the world-renowned Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Voracious bibliophile, avid historian, and self-taught man of letters, Bancroft (or “H. H.” as he is familiarly known) followed an adventurous youth with a literary career that sought to chronicle and preserve the early history of California and the American West. In Literary Industries, edited from H. H.’s autobiography by his direct descendent Kim Bancroft, we encounter the dynamic personality who, with the aid of his assistants, achieved this impressive goal. Literary Industries will be published by Heyday in January 2014. T..... |
• Legendary Locals of the Outside Lands  Legendary Locals of the Outside Lands These profiles are from Legendary Locals of San Francisco’s Richmond, Sunset, and Golden Gate Park (Arcadia Publishing), by City Guide Lorri Ungaretti, who leads tours of the Sunset, Richmond, and Stern Grove. Her book includes many more remarkable people from the city’s west side. Three distinct areas — the residential Richmond and Sunset Districts, separated by Golden Gate Park — were once considered the western desert of San Francisco. At one time, much of this land was inaccessible sand dunes, and many people believed it was uninhabitable. Over time, however, visionary people moved sand, created a great park, constructed roads, laid water and sewage lines, and built h..... |
Norton I, Famous for Being Well-Known
by Greg Pabst
Celebrity is a capricious state in that, while many
seek the public eye, few catch and hold it.
Consider Joshua Norton, the self-styled Emperor
of the United States and erstwhile Protector of
Mexico.
The fast and easy analysis–maybe crazy, maybe
not so crazy, but everybody in San Francisco
loved him just the same! The Cranky Historian
suggests that a closer look helps explain this
supposedly universal municipal "love."
A few well-documented facts:
• Joshua Norton was a successful merchant in
the gold rush and a member of the first
Vigilance Committee.
• He lost all when the bottom fell out of the rice
market.
• He returned to public attention after some
years–much changed in mental condition–to
anoint himself "royalty."
• His celebrity reached its zenith in the last ten
years of his life–and continues today.
Much was written about "The Emp" in his own
time, most of it in a lightly humorous vein. The
usual theme, "only in San Francisco," is in the
DNA of our collective self-identity.
Yes! San Francisco IS different, that's why we live
here. It's what historians call "exceptionalism," we
celebrate it, and we exploit it.
Norton I: Emperor of the United States (1986),
exhaustively researched and written by former
newspaperman William Drury, tells the story best,
I think.
Drury adds:
• An Englishman named Nathan Peiser claimed
to have lived with the Norton family in South
Africa for more than a year.
• The family consisted of English-born parents
John and Sarah and nine children (Joshua the
eldest).
• They were observant Jews.
• Peiser, also Jewish, recalled Joshua
sometimes exhibited bizarre behavior, and
especially remembered an incident when he
disrupted family prayers.
Peiser eventually found his way to California and
again encountered Joshua:
My old friend then told me that he was not the son
of Mr. Norton of Cape Town, but the crown prince
to the throne of France; that he had been sent to
Cape Town to save himself from assassination;
that he was adopted by Mr. Norton and retained
his name ... and taken the title "Emperor" to
which he was entitled rightly to bear ... I looked at
the man a moment and then told him I thought he
was crazy; to which he replied, "And so do a good
many others."
Whatever his state of mental health, it marked
him as eccentric, but not unusual. Drury quotes
Amelia Neville, whose carriage, he says,
"frequently traveled the avenue of banks and
cranks." She noted that "So many quaint
gentlemen, who in a modern city would face the
indignity of being 'run in,' passed unmolested in
Montgomery Street." Norton's "peers" bore titles
like George Washington the Second and the King
of Pain. Exceptionalism again.
But Norton differentiated himself through media,
and his proclamations–front page of the Evening
Bulletin–sold papers. Even faked proclamations
by competing papers lifted sales. And when the
proclamations and coverage got the attention of
out-of-town reporters, Norton became a topic for
human interest stories worldwide–and it made
him famous.
Norton was soon putting jingle in the pockets of
San Francisco entrepreneurs. Tourists wanted to
meet this "only in San Francisco" eccentric who
would exchange some of their currency for his
own–his autographed on the spot.
Tourists could take home memorabilia, plaster
statues of His Royal Highness or lithographs by
cartoonist Ed Jump of Emp's Adventures, or send
a Norton picture postcard, or smoke an Emperor
Norton Imperial Cigar.
Nathan Peiser was probably right, Norton was
pretty crazy. But at the same time, he became a
celebrity, famous for being well known (and
famous for being crazy; check People magazine,
some things don't change), but profits were made,
especially after the opening of the trans-
continental railroad, carrying waves of early
tourists.
But from a 21st century point of view, Norton is
somewhat a tragic figure, locked inside an illness
that nonetheless enriched others.
Mark Twain, who knew the Emperor before his
celebrity was widespread, wrote sympathetically,
"O, dear, it was always a painful thing for me to
see the Emperor begging, for although nobody
else believed he was an Emperor, he believed it."
Historic photos reprinted with permission, SF History Center, SF Public Library
Emperor Norton bicycling around San Francisco.
Send comments and questions to guidelines@sfcityguides.org
Material of San Francisco City Guides. Please give credit to the author and SF City Guides if referenced or reproduced.