I think Don found another mystery in the mystery photo. Everyone seems in agreement that the house on the end of the block is the Crosby House. As HBH noted, the avenue is hidden by the hill and can be seen more clearly in this photo from around the same time. 



Also, if anyone is interested in living in a mystery photo, it’s for sale at the moment, and it looks like the interior has changed as little as the exterior.

The house next to it is the Bunnell House, constructed from 1906 to 1908. Except the house in the Mystery Photo from 1908 is clearly not the Bunnell House and therefore the photo must not be from 1908. The photo must be from after the Crosby House went up in 1902 but before the house next to it became a construction site for the Bunnell house in 1906. 

So that leads to the most likely unanswerable question of when the photo was actually taken and why that rather new-looking house in the foreground had such a brief existence.

That makes sense. And I think it’s also possible to make a reasonable conclusion about when and why the photo was taken. According to a report commissioned by the Duluth Heritage Preservation Commission, Superior Street was paved between 16th and 23rd avenue east in 1904. As the focus of the photo is the block itself and not any particular house, it seems likely that the picture was taken to commemorate the completion of the street work.