I thought I’d try a different approach and see if the scale on the countertop could provide any additional information about the photo. It turns out it does, but only if the only thing about the photo that interests you is the scale. 

It’s a Toledo brand but a rare style. The company seems to have made very few models with a combination of a rectangular display window on the top and oval pendulum window on the bottom. This scale seems to be an exact match, but it is so deteriorated that it doesn’t provide any more information than the scale shown in the photo itself.

Toledo Model No. 25 is slightly different (it has a curved top window) but the text on the exterior is clearly the same. It says, “Correct Weight Shown Above. When red weight is on pendulum, read red figures. Springless.”

Neither of the above scales show the tray being used on the scale in the Duluth photo. That is a glass milk tray as can be seen on this similar scale.

It’s also worth noting that the Duluth store scale has a mirror attached, similar to this one so the client can see what Mr. Hjelm is seeing on his side of the scale. He appears to be early in his career in the photo, and he or his boss may have felt that he did not yet have the trust of the community (or that the community did not yet trust that new type of springless scale).  

The scale in the Duluth store photo is a very early model Toledo scale and therefore only tells us the picture must have been taken some time after 1903. And many Toledo scales are still in good working condition, so it doesn’t provide an upper limit on the year the photo may have been taken. But it does not seem like the particular model shown in the photo is available anywhere in good condition, so if the Hjelm family took care of that scale and passed it down, it is probably worth quite a bit of money today.

Given that Mr. Hjelm looks under 40 in the photo and the caption describes him as an employee, 2001 W. Second St. seems the most likely address for the photo. 



This satellite photo from 1948 shows the neighborhood the store served when it was a still grid of standard Duluth city blocks.



This satellite photo from 1972 shows that grid in the process of being broken up by the construction of Highway 53/Piedmont Ave, with the partially finished road section pointing directly at the location of the shop. The street pattern is still intact but most of the buildings in the way of the new road have already been torn down. This includes the store at 2001 W. Second St., with construction not yet begun on the building that will stand in its place, Midtowne Manor II (completed in 1982), while the shape and shadow of its partner building, Midtowne Manor I (completed in 1971), is clearly visible just to the north of the unfinished highway section.



The building that housed the store that Mr. Hjelm later owned one block to the north seems to still be standing.

Just to resolve the side-question of my own creation, Mr. Hjelm’s 1810 Piedmont Ave market does seem to have been a corner store at the end of West Second Street where it meets Piedmont Avenue. There is a building at that location visible in the 1948 satellite image above. If you follow Second Street from inside the red circle at 20th Avenue West over to Piedmont Avenue (the road that cuts across the grid toward the top of the image) there is a small triangular building visible between the grid-line drawn onto the map crossing Second Street and Piedmont Avenue. The house directly next to this triangular building, on Second Street itself, is still standing and has the address 1812 W. Second St., six houses down Second Street even though it is almost on the corner. This would make sense if the neighboring buildings that previously lined the short stretch of Piedmont Avenue shared the Second Street block numbering, starting from where Piedmont Avenue meets 18th Avenue West. This would give the triangular building seen in the satellite image the address 1810 Piedmont Ave.