Duluth Once Upon a Time: The Northern National Bank

I'm not sure how I feel about immediately recognizing two long gone buildings in a bad print of a blurred copy of a photo from 1869, but since I did, I might as well share the reference. This somewhat later photo from almost the same perspective shows that the building on the left was occupied by William Branch, dealer in real estate. The skyscraper on the right looks like it's still waiting for a tenant.

True history nerd cred, Matthew! My question: What building or vantage point were those two photos taken from? Because I think they were on very different days; the first one looks like the building on the right is under construction. Was there a tall building across the street?

And for what it's worth, here's the ACTUAL photo that image was taken from.

And here is likely where the photo was taken from. These were some pretty nice "skyscrapers" as well. 

That's funny. I had noticed it was a different photo taken from almost the exact same perspective and was thinking there must be a reason for that. But because you can't see what's behind the camera, it's hard to know what made that particular spot easy to take pictures from. 

I also recognized the buildings that you suggested as the location of the photographer because both of these building groups were part of a post I did several years ago on digitally cleaning up old Duluth photos. When you brighten these images, it's clear they both face away from the harbor -- all these businesses are on the same side of the street. What I hadn't realized until this discussion here is that they are neighbors, which becomes clear when you place the photos side by side.
  

That still leaves the question of where the photographer was, but your photo link came with an address and it turns out that a rather tall, long and famous building was across the street from all these businesses in 1869: The Clark House. In the photo below, the detailing of the facade matches the far right building quite well. I'm actually a bit surprised that we could start with a blurry image and then reconstruct nearly the entirety of a long gone city block from 1869. And glad that I retained something from all the work that I put into that post three years ago.