Duluth, MN

8 min readNov 11, 2022

What comes to mind first when you think of Duluth MN? the aerial lift bridge of course!! With a height of 180 feet when the span is completely raised, the mammoth steel and cable structure was completed in 1905. It connects the “mainland” with Minnesota (or Park) Point, a seven mile long sandbar. It is mostly just one long road straight down the middle dotted with houses, a couple marinas, a few churches, a decommissioned fire station and branches of the U.S. Coast Guard and National Guard. Five miles out the road ends at a 2-mile nature trail that goes to the end of the point. Across that point would be another sandbar jutting out 3 miles to the state of Wisconsin.

Adjacent to the bridge you have the Gowan-Lenning Brown Co building which served as both a grocery manufacturing plant and wholesale warehouse. The firm’s products were sold under the “Honor” brand, which used a likeness of George Washington with its packaging. If you look closely you will find terra-cotta silhouettes of Washington’s profile. (3 above the main entrance and 2 above the left and left wings of the building)

The DeWitt-Seitz Co. was organized in 1905 as a mattress and furniture business. It started out first in “jobbing” buying products wholesale from manufacturers in the east, shipping them at low rates over the Great Lakes and then selling them to retailers. After the Great Depression the company shifted more to manufacturing as the role of the middleman in commerce diminished. Manufacturing in the Canal Park site ended in 1983 and the concept evolved into a multi-use space with shops, restaurants and offices in 1985.

This building named the Canal Block I couldn’t find any info about it but was impressed by the ghost sign along the side of it saying Paper Products Co tested Papers

Another ghost sign to behold, Zenith Machine Co a manufacturer of refrigerators, freezers, washers, dryers and ranges. Fun fact that Duluth is nicknamed the Zenith City. In the longer form: ‘Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas’. It was coined by the editor of Duluth’s first newspaper in a grand oration in 1868 proclaiming Duluth’s future as the ‘Chicago of Lake Superior’.

Here you see the twin water towers on top of the Suites Hotel building

Now we enter downtown to check out some of the buildings there.

Old Astoria hotel was built in downtown Duluth in 1905. It will be slated for demolition unless preservationists prevail. The building deteriorated over the years and its last tenants have been an antique book store and a chinese restaurant.

The Temple Opera Block was built by the freemasons in 1889 because just up the avenue they also owned the Temple Opera House. In its heydey stood seven stories tall and was capped with an onion-shaped copper dome designed to look out on all four directions of the compass. You can see a depiction of what it used to look like here. Today the top three floors and the Moorish dome have been removed. Rumour has it the Temple Opera Block may have been partially destroyed in order to make the NorShor’s Tower stand out more.

Here we have the Norshor originally opened in 1910 as a vaudeville house called the Orpheum. In 1941 it was transformed into a movie house and took on the NorShor name. For a short period it degraded into a strip club that had a lot of drug dealing and gang activity. In 2010, the city’s economic development authority purchased the building and redeveloped it into an art deco theater operated by the Duluth Playhouse. Didn’t we call out from the previous entry that the Norshor used to have a tower? It doesnt exist today but had a tower that stood 65 feet above the theater but it was removed in 1967 because it was deemed expensive to restore during the renovation period.

The 14-story building opened in 1925 as the Hotel Duluth — the tallest hotel in the northwest at the time. Many businessmen and prominent figures stayed there, including President JFK. In 1980 the 400-room hotel was converted into 150 apartments for moderate-income elderly people, and its name was changed to the Greysolon Plaza. Today it also serves as a wedding & event venue.

The banners for Fitger’s profess it to be Minnesota’s oldest brewpub. It was named after August Fitger who founded the brand in the 1880s. The beer was in production until 1972 and even survived a stint of the Prohibition producing soda pop and candy bars. The Fitger’s Brewery Complex was re-opened in September of 1984 with a 48 room hotel, three full service restaurants, and a retail center.

A couple of yards away you have Leif Erickson Park. There is an interesting story behind its naming. From 1926 to 1927 four men decided to sail from Bergen, Norway to Boston, and then on to Duluth just to prove that Leif Erikson and the Vikings could have made the same journey. The roughly 10,000 mile trip is the longest distance traveled for that size ship in modern times. After this feat the ship was purchased and donated to the city. It was displayed in a park which eventually became Leif Erickson Park in the early 1930s. Scandinavian Americans across the United States and in Minnesota claimed Erickson as the original “discoverer” of the Americas. This is part of their long effort to claim the mantle of discovery from Christopher Columbus and Italian Americans.

Across the street from the park you have the Duluth Armory which served both a military training facility and an entertainment venue since its construction in 1915. While military activity was the initial concern of the Duluth Armory, the building has hosted social and cultural events since it opened. In recent years it bcame less sought-after for military and entertainment purposes. It served a brief stint as a storage facility for maintenance vehicles and has since become a space for an arts and music non-profit since 2001.

Speaking of public buildings one deserving of mention is the Central High School. Perched on the side of the hill, standing watch over the ever-changing landscape of the city since 1892. It apans an entire city block with a 210 foot tall clock tower to show off the strength of the flourishing city it was to serve. Fast forward to 1971 the building ceased operating as a high school. Developers purchased the property in 2021 and intend to convert it into apartments.

Beautiful in its own right as a modernist building is the Duluth Public Library. Looking like a cantilevered ore boat over some public property the library is the work of Latvian architect Gunnar Birkerts and was completed in 1980. It was however not absent from controversy from the time it opened. One detraction was it didn’t blend with its surroundings and blocks the view of the union train station. Its design was proven over the years to be very energy inefficient hence the upkeep costs of the facility turned up really high over the years. To the point that the city proposed demolishing the structure but never proceeded with it.

If you get a chance check out the Enger Tower. Built in 1939, it is a 5 story structure constructed of national Blue Stone taken from this region and stands guard from the top of the Duluth skyline. The park and adjacent golf course were developed on land purchased with money donated by successful furniture dealer Bert Enger in 1921. His 1931 will included more money for the park’s development, and in 1939 Enger Tower was built in the park in his honor.

Speaking of Enger I was able to locate one of the old warehouses bearing his name. Enger & Olson Warehouse was once the premier place to purchase furniture

The last thing I will share is this somber memorial of a tragic event that took place on the night of June 15, 1920 when three African American men in their early 20s were lynched by a mob of white Duluth residents. The three men were in town working with a traveling circus when two white teenagers falsely claimed that six Black circus workers had assaulted them and raped a local white woman. Without any physical evidence of a crime, six Black men were arrested and held in the old Duluth jail. Sensational reports of the accusations circulated inciting white residents to rage and mob vengeance. A mob of at least 5,000 broke into the jail and kidnapped 3 men and they were stripped, tortured, dragged, and hanged from a lamp post in front of 10,000 people 😧 It took until 2003 for the memorial to be built so to ensure that the event be not be forgotten.

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Duluth, MN

Written by Jad