I miss the days when the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce headquarters was next to the Last Place on Earth. That was synergy at its finest.
The photo above is from roughly 1993 1996. Last Place hadn’t quite finished moving in. I think the two were neighbors for at least 10 years before the chamber hightailed it to First Street.
Someone — I think her name was Gloria — posted this picture of the Seaway Market on Facebook a few months back and asked if anyone remembered the place. I saved the image, but can’t find the Facebook post anymore.
Here’s the deal with the Seaway Market:
Here is a really neat photo looking back into the history of Duluth. The first version of our beloved Lift Bridge didn’t really lift at all. It initially was built in 1905 as a very rare transporter bridge. It wasn’t until 1930 that it was converted into the form we know today.
This is the view looking up from inside the new main entrance to Denfeld High School. The main floor of the new addition connects to the old building through the auditorium lobby. The main floor of the addition will include a new cafeteria and common area, administrative offices and media center.
Here are two historic photos of the Rentola, a Finnish boarding house at 4 N. 59th Ave. W., in West Duluth. The top photo is from Karl Hagglund, whose grandmother was a maid at the Rentola. The next photo is from 1961, courtesy of the Northeast Minnesota Historical Center. So the story goes, there was an old steam house nearby where Rentola residents took saunas.
The photo above is from 1910. It was almost certainly shot from North 59th Avenue West, near where Tacony Street intersects it. I tried to replicate it with the modern shot below, but trees, fences and houses kept me from shooting at the same spot, and the view is much more limited.
Behind all the trees across the street is a rock outcropping that matches the one in the 1910 photo.
Shawn Nicholas made it as a featured image in today’s Gizmodo post about photo composites.
Debbie Waters, education director at Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory, shows off a red-tailed hawk during Hawk Weekend activities today.
It took a few days to pull together, and the link was kind of buried in the Upset Duluth thread, but in response to demand a gallery of portraits has been started over at the News Tribune Attic. It includes the 1995 photo above, by the News Tribune’s Bob King, of a Superior resident concerned about the condition of the sidewalk near his home. There are photos of people without concerns, too.
I’ll keep adding to it if there’s reader interest in seeing more.
Every month or so there is a story in the Duluth News Tribune about a community member or group of people upset about something. The story usually features a photo like the one above, shot by Bob King.
I don’t mean to make light of any of the issues these people are upset about, or be critical at all of the photography. Just the opposite. What I’m saying is, for some reason I love these photos. Seriously.
I didn’t ask around, with the crowd as thick as it was, but I’m assuming this big wooden arch must be the one from the Spalding Hotel that was retrofitted into O’Gara’s fairgrounds restaurant in St. Paul.
Saturday, Sept. 4, was a record setter at the Minnesota State Fair. In that single day, 234,384 people attended.
Left:
Cormier Dry Goods, 6227 Grand Ave., West Duluth, in 1907.
(Northeast Minnesota Historical Center photo.)
Right:
The same building in 2010, now entirely apartments.
(Perfect Duluth Day photo.)
Cormier Dry Goods stayed in business well into the 1930s. Gustave Cormier was the proprietor and lived upstairs. By the mid-1930s, J.A. Lundeen’s shoe store shared the building.
