Sears & Roebuck built a row of houses on Leicester back in the 1920s for its employees, decades before the store moved into the Miller Hill Mall. It used to be where the casino is now.

The Washburn (WI) Museum used to have a display about Barksdale and the homes in that area... I haven't been there in  years, though, so not sure what's there now. But that's how I learned that some homes still visible along Hwy 2 in that area are the original "company town" houses.

Below is a rough draft excerpt from X-comm's forthcoming "Lost Duluth" book, whose introduction discusses the development of Duluth townships and neighborhoods. There's not much more in our piece than you already have. Besides the wonderful Pat Maus at the NEMHC, try the spectacular reference librarians at the downtown Duluth Public Library. If there is more info to be found, it will likely be within a history of Marshall-Wells hardware. And whenever buildings are involved, the building inspector's office in City Hall has records of building, renovation, and demolition permits. City directors (at the DPL) also help identify which buildings stood at which addresses throughout the years.

By 1920 most of Duluth's major neighborhoods had taken shape. In 1920 a section of Oatmeal Hill was redeveloped as Morley Heights. Named for Albert Morely Marshall of Marshall-Wells Hardware—at the time the largest hardware manufacturer in the world—Morley Heights was created as a company community for employees of the Marshall-Wells hardware company. The DuPont company had some empty employee houses in Barksdale, Wisconsin. Marshall Wells purchased over eighty of them in 1919 and dragged them across a frozen Lake Superior and up Woodland Avenue to their new location during the winter of 1919 - 1920 [shipping method needs to be verified, as it seems unlikely that the lake would be frozen enough to do this]. The idea didn't go over very well with Marshall-Wells employees, however, and the neighborhood opened to anyone who wished to live there.

Jinx Tony D. :-)

Take out the quote before "This..."

I grew up in two of them, and played in a few more as a kid. Nothing much to report about them as they're pretty average houses. Only the duplexes are similar. Our non-duplex seemed to have been made out of leftover scraps from all the rest of the houses in the neighborhood, since, when my parents opened up the kitchen wall to install a patio door, none of the stud-pieces was longer than 3 or 4 feet long.

I grew up in one of the Dupont homes that remained in Washburn.  It was an amazingly built house.  The story we were told was that our house was the Dupont plant manager's home.  Great for parties and kids -- 7 bedrooms, large bathrooms, butler's pantry.  Loved it!