Mystery Photo: Children in Front of Depression-era Duluth Home
This old photo, titled “1940 DULUTH Children in Front of Home DEPRESSION ERA Photo (198-N)” popped up on eBay recently.
This old photo, titled “1940 DULUTH Children in Front of Home DEPRESSION ERA Photo (198-N)” popped up on eBay recently.
This undated postcard shows the 500-foot Steamer David Z. Norton loading 3,000 bushels of wheat in the Duluth Harbor. Note the postcard has “J” as the middle initial of David Norton. That is presumably a misprint. David Zadock Norton was a director of the American Ship Building Company and the namesake of the ship.
West Duluth was the scene of windmill experiments a century ago, according to a story in the Oct. 31, 1921 Duluth Herald. Albert Herman Heyroth was hard at work at 55th Avenue West and Raleigh Street attempting to generate electricity for home energy use.
The History Channel website mentions Duluth today in its “This Day in History” feature, pointing out that Duluth Mayor Gary Doty cut the ribbon opening the 1,480-foot–long Leif Erickson Tunnel on Interstate 35 on Oct. 28, 1992.
And now, a little something for the ladies. The St. Louis Hotel was Duluth’s premier lodging establishment in the 1880s. It stood where the Medical Arts Building is today.
Keeping Duluth’s shipping channels open requires occasional dredging. This undated postcard offers a look at the process in the early 20th century.
Here’s a look at a pair of East Fourth Street buildings — one soon to be demolished, another already lost to history. The photos on the left in the side-by-sides above are from Oct. 22, 2011. The ones on the right are from Oct. 22, 2021.
An article published this week in the online magazine Slate explores the letters exchanged circa 1940 between a Superior librarian, Edith Carlson, and the staff of Frank Lloyd Wright. She wanted the famed architect to design her modest home. It got as far as preliminary sketches and building instructions.
What’s the proper endgame for this shirt? In my practice, bleach spillage (as is the case here) would usually qualify this shirt for a move from my Saturday pile to the rag bin. But with this being such a noteworthy piece of early Perfect Duluth Day, and for that matter Duluth history, it seems like there should be a more proper retirement.
A friend of mine from Seattle was eating at Jimmy Mac’s Roadhouse in Renton, just south of “the Emerald City,” and sent the above photo to me. At first it seemed like a manufactured novelty sign because searches only returned other copies of the same sign. But then I found a Minnesota Historical Society listing for a paper crate label from the same company from around the 1950s, so it appears to have been a real business.
Here they are, Berger and Hilda Ekstrom, in their wedding duds. We know their names thanks to the scribbling on the back of the photo. And we know from the cardboard frame that the photographer is Lars Linden, the fiery Swede who had a studio at 1619 W. Superior St. in Duluth. What’s the mystery? Well, everything else. What became of ol’ Berger and Hilda?
The Minnesota Historical Society produced this video dramatizing excerpts from two of novelist and social critic Sinclair Lewis’ breakthrough works — Babbitt and Main Street. Lewis, of course, went on to become a Duluthian and even kind of almost coined the phrase “perfect Duluth day.”
The program is created and hosted by Craig Johnson and features actors David Beukema, Anna Leverett, Damian Leverett and Melanie Wehrmacher. It was filmed on location in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sauk Centre.
Remember the Pettersen gals photo on Point of Rocks? Well, they’ve turned up in another old Duluth pic, this time on the beach at Minnesota Point.
Geeks will help out in the comments, but it appears what we have here is a QSL card — a postcard mailed to confirm receipt of a ham or citizens-band radio transmission. The CM 76 presumably means it was a calling card of Duluth ham radio operator Charles F. Makowski circa 1976.
