Duluth-area Matchbook Collection
Perfect Duluth Day presents the Duluth Matchbook Collection — a gallery of small cardboard folders with a striking surface on one side, featuring images promoting select enterprises of the Arrowhead region.
Perfect Duluth Day presents the Duluth Matchbook Collection — a gallery of small cardboard folders with a striking surface on one side, featuring images promoting select enterprises of the Arrowhead region.
From the heyday of Monopoly comes … Pride of the Twin Ports Area Game! It doesn’t appear to be something local marketing geniuses came up with, but rather a product of a company called Citipride of America, which probably made different versions of the game for different cities across the country. Perhaps the local Chamber of Commerce sold sponsorships on the game board to various businesses to raise money to have the game made, and then sales of the game raised money for the chamber … or something. That’s all conjecture; there doesn’t seem to be any info online about the game or the company.
So, does anyone else have this game? Can anyone put a year on it? It’s no older than 1978, because the instructions contain historical info about the sponsoring local businesses and mention that Northwest Office Supply expanded in 1978. It’s no more recent than 1982, because the Normandy Hotel was taken over by Holiday Inn & Suites that year.
1988 relic.
If you have a button to add, upload it to the comments. It’s one of the nice things about the Internet — we can all have a button collection without having to have a button collection.
I’m sad to see that the Big L sign has gone dark. It’s definitely my favorite illuminated sign in the area. Here’s a gallery of a few more of my favorites. I’m sure there are others that I’ve missed, so if you have some photos you’d like to share, please do so in the comments.
Via Bob Halverson, here’s another old Duluth radio jingle.
Hey, someone had to lead at setting the pace.
Related link: Bob’s initial post about local jingles.
WIGL radio was a daytime Top-40 music station covering the Duluth-Superior market from 1961 to 1964. I am a collector of radio jingles, and have many from WEBC and a couple of early WAKX ones. However, WIGL has been elusive. I e-mailed Lew Latto about it (who owned the station for a while), and he regretfully replied that he was unable to help me. I know some people taped the radio back then (I did) — maybe there’s an aircheck out there with a WIGL jingle or two. I remember they had purple promo signs on the backs of the city buses during that era, and their jingles always ended with “Wiggle!!!” Posting this in case somebody is unknowingly sitting on a piece of Duluth-Superior broadcasting history.
Among the random things to show up in my e-mail today (thanks Jake and Wendy) is this photo of an old (and awesome) ashtray from the Merry Inn Tavern. The address, 917 W. Michigan St., would have been roughly where Mesaba Avenue meets I-35 today.
The Merry Inn Tavern and Michelizzi’s Italian Food grocery store were part of the Terminal Hotel throughout the 1960s. The whole works was operated by Michael Michelizzi until about 1973, which is probably when the building was torn down.
The name “Terminal Hotel” goes back at least as far as 1930, although city directories in the 1930s and ’40s often refer to the property simply as “furnished rooms.”
Michelizzi’s reign at the Terminal seems to have begun in the early 1930s. In the 1920s there is a listing for two blocks away, 1131 W. Michigan St., for Mike Michelizzi & Co., a store handling “Fancy and Staple groceries cigars tobaccos and fancy Italian imported goods Macamoni and Soft Drinks.” I’m not sure if there’s a fancy, little-known Italian item called “Macamoni” or if that’s supposed to be macaroni.
In the early 1900s, the Cholette Hotel was at 917 W. Michigan St. During Prohibition, it had a “soft drink parlor” at which, obviously, bootlegging took place. For some of the sordid details regarding that, read the comments to this post.
Duluth native Frank “Butch” Larson appeared on Wheaties cereal boxes in 1935. Finding one of those boxes after 74 years might be a challenge.
