E. Rose's Boot & Shoe Bazaar of Duluth

E. Rose’s Boot & Shoe Bazaar of Duluth

Paul Lundgren Jun 07, 2020 3 Comments

This Victorian trade card promotes E. Rose’s Boot and Shoe Bazaar, a Duluth retailer of Burt’s Fine Shoes. Info on the store isn’t easy to come by, but a pair of newspaper ads found after this post was initially published indicate the store was open from 1882 to 1886.

Wikipedia tells us Edwin C. Burt of the New York City-based shoe manufacturing outfit Edwin C. Burt & Co. died in 1884 and the company assigned its liabilities over to Thomas Cunningham of Blauvelt, N.Y. in 1898.

At the end of the 19th Century the building at 7 E. Superior St. might have been the Long Block, but things get fuzzy that far back. The back of this trade card, and both of the ads shown in the first comment to this post, add “Blue Front” near the address, so perhaps there was a Blue Front building there circa 1886. Today the Duluth Technology Village stretches across that address.

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History Victorian Trade Cards

3 Comments

Paul Lundgren

about 4 years ago



Thanks to Mike Creger for finding these two newspaper ads from the Superior Times that bookend E. Rose's shoe store history in Duluth. The clip above, from the Sept. 30, 1882 issue, notes the shop "has been opened," one would assume recently. The clip below, from the July 3, 1886 issue, indicates the shop will be closing and moving to St. Paul.

Also, the second ad does not refer to the store as an "agent for Burt's Fine Shoes," but instead includes a graphic of a Curtis & Wheeler brand shoe, a Rochester, N.Y. company under the charge of Eugene T. Curtis and Artemas H. Wheeler.

Gina Temple-Rhodes

about 4 years ago

By 1909, Cook Ely, the photographer described in a recent post, also was using 7 E. Superior St. as his studio. 



You could get a free baby contest photo taken there, back in 1909.

Paul Lundgren

about 4 years ago

Gina has also found a listing for the Boston Cafe at 7 E. Superior St. in 1909 -- the same time as Cook Ely's photography studio was there. It seems likely the cafe was a storefront and Ely might have been down the hall or on an upper floor. And again, that was all two decades after the shoe bazaar had closed.

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