Duluth-area School Pin-back Buttons
Be true to your school and let your colors fly. Collected here are various pin-back buttons promoting schools in, or near, Duluth.
Be true to your school and let your colors fly. Collected here are various pin-back buttons promoting schools in, or near, Duluth.
Northern News Now reports demolition of the former Duluth Central High School on the top of the hill began this week. The 55-acre property was sold in August to Chester Creek View, a New York developer, for $8 million.
Emerson School, located at 1028 W. Third St. in the Observation Hill area of Duluth’s Central Hillside neighborhood, opened for classes 130 years ago today — Jan. 2, 1892. The school closed circa 1982 and became apartments. The building was purchased by the Emerson Tenants Cooperative in 1994.
Although this brochure for Denfeld High School has a 1991 copyright, the photos appear to be circa 1987-88. Alert eyeballs will spot current Denfeld principal Tom Tusken and Duluth School Board member Alanna Oswald as students in the photos.
In June of 1971, 50 years ago this month, WDIO reporter Stu Stronach did a series of special reports on the then-ongoing process of desegregating the Duluth public school system. This video is a compilation of those reports.
An article in the Duluth Herald of April 28, 1921 — one hundred years ago today — calls attention to how western Duluth kids seldom ventured to the center of town, much less to the eastern side.
This postcard was mailed 110 years ago today — June 27, 1910. It shows Franklin Elementary School at 411 E. Seventh St., and the surrounding neighborhood. Franklin School was demolished in 1979 and is today the site of Hillside Sport Court Park. More on the history of Franklin School can be found on zenithcity.com.
Minnesota’s Independent School District #709 was led by 29 individuals during its first 150 years. For the historical record we list here the superintendents of Duluth Public Schools from 1870 to 2020.
Courtesy of the New York Public Library and Google Books, detailed Duluth School Board annual reports from 125 years ago are available online to geek out on.
Links:
Report of the Board of Education of the City of Duluth, Minnesota (1891 to 1894)
Report of the Board of Education of the City of Duluth, Minnesota (1895 to 1901)
A post on the Duluth Public Library’s Vintage Duluth blog looks at the “Early History of Duluth’s Emerson School.”
Bryant School was built in 1894 at 3102 W. Third St. in Duluth’s friendly West End neighborhood, the present-day location of Cummins Sales and Service. Hugh McKenzie shot the photo above, which is loosely dated by UMD’s Kathryn A. Martin Library Archives & Special Collections as “1914?”
Assembled below is a small collection of class photos from the school, which closed in the 1970s.
As another school year ends, Perfect Duluth Day once again looks back through the pages of an old Duluth school yearbook. In this edition we present a gallery of select images from the 1969 edition of The Times, the Lincoln Park Junior High School annual.
New measures at Denfeld High School designed to limit the time students spend outside class prompted some angry social media posts last week suggesting it restricted students from accessing restrooms.
“No more permission to pee,” read a graphic accompanying some of the posts on Facebook.
Denfeld Principal Tonya Sconiers was not available for comment this week, but said via email the school does not have a new lavatory policy.
At-large Duluth School Board member Harry Welty wrote on his Lincoln Democrat blog about digging into a box of thank yous last night and spreading them on his office floor “to make a little campaign video for a campaign webpage.” And then he posted “this shaky video.”
Welty’s term ends Jan. 8; Duluth candidates officially file to seek school board positions between July 5 and July 18.
“Years ago I attended some session during which a presenter made a good suggestion,” Welty wrote. “She warned her listeners that it was easy to get discouraged and she suggested that we all collect thank yous and such. She thought that when we got down we could look in the old thank yous and remind ourselves that we weren’t such bad folks.
“Until I got on the School Board in 1996 my little sunshine folder wasn’t very big. Then I started reading to classrooms.”
The chimes of the 125-year-old Central High School clock tower fell silent last week when one of the clock’s gears failed. A new gear is being made and should be in place within about six weeks, according to Dave Spooner, manager of facilities for Duluth Public Schools.
“We’ve got the clock apart and we’re in the process of having another gear made,” Spooner said. “It’s not something you can buy, you have to have them made. … It’s just a failure of an old part.”
Central High School opened in 1892, built with a clock tower that rises 230 feet. A new Central High School opened in 1971, and the original building was converted into the school district’s administrative offices. The building has since been known as the Central Administration Building or “Historic Old Central.”
