Duluth-area Payphone Remnants
This mid 20th-century payphone and 1996/97 directory are housed in a wooden booth inside the Wieland Block, a Downtown Duluth commercial office building. The phone doesn’t work; it’s on display as antique decor.
The premiere issue of Unsalted magazine includes an article about the quest to find Duluth’s last pay telephone. The conclusion (spoiler alert) is that there is probably not a single public phone left in Duluth that accepts coins, and the last one that did was probably the one on the main floor of the Duluth Public Library, which purportedly took in its final coins in early 2020.
As a supplement to that story, this Perfect Duluth Day post features photos of the “remnants” of payphones — the non-working phones, former payphones that are free phones, and the booths, cases and pillars that remain despite no longer housing a working payphone.
Since there seems to be no Duluth-area payphone authority to call and ask about the subject, the only way to find these objects is accidentally or by asking around. So this post is also another method of asking around. Is there a real-deal payphone anywhere near Duluth that accepts coins and completes calls? Where are the other payphone remnants that are missing from this post?
As mentioned in the article, the payphone in Tower Hall at the College of St. Scholastica is the only functioning one that could be found in the city — but it doesn’t accept coins; it’s a free-to-use phone.
This payphone and old-school wooden booth are near the Grand Avenue entrance to the Kom-on-Inn, a drinking establishment in West Duluth. The phone doesn’t work.
The non-functioning payphone and wooden booth at the Wieland Block in Downtown Duluth are located near the private skywalk that crosses Superior Street connecting to the Duluth Technology Village.
There is another non-functional payphone in the entryway to Route 61 Lounge and Bowling in Moose Lake, formerly known as Gamper’s.
Outside the store at Trail Center Lodge on the Gunflint Trail sits an old, empty phone booth.
Downtown Duluth once had numerous outdoor payphones that sat inside concrete pillars. Only two of them remain. The one above is on the corner of Second Avenue West and First Street.
The other remaining Downtown Duluth payphone pillar is on the corner of Third Avenue East and First Street.
Big Bay Town Park on Madeline Island has two free-to-use emergency phones housed in what appear to be late 1900s-era cases. The first is at the office/shower building.
The other presumably old phone case at Big Bay Town Park is outside the restroom near the path to the beach.