The age-old technique of using images to promote music is as popular as ever. More and more of the artworks, however, exist solely as compressed digital images for use on the internet rather than taking up space in the physical world as actual “posters” taped to restroom walls and thumbtacked to bulletin boards. Either way, they’re all JPEGs on Perfect Duluth Day.
This postcard of the Rustic Bridge at Lester Park was mailed on New Year’s Eve of 1912 — 110 years ago today — to Mrs. Frank Larson of Stockholm, Wis.
We stand on the precipice of a magnificent achievement in the category of literary endurance. Next week Perfect Duluth Day will launch the eighth year of its “Saturday Essay” series by publishing the 300th essay. Did we think when we launched with the first essay in 2016 it would last this long? Of course we did. We like to write; you like to read. Duh.
At the end of each year we briefly rest our typing devices and look back at some of the highlights of the previous year. Last week we focused on the most read essays of 2022. This week we ignore the numbers and look back at a few select essays of similar quality that might have been missed by non-compulsive followers.
Perfect Duluth Day will celebrate 20 years of being Duluth’s Duluthiest website on June 29, 2023. At some point this year, we’ll be relaunching the site under a new WordPress theme and hoping we don’t break everything in the process. But before we get further into explaining that, we lead with the standard plug for donations to ensure the whole operation remains solvent.
So if you appreciate the thorough listings of hoopla on the PDD Calendar and/or the features on the PDD Blog, kindly drop a few bucks in the PayPal account.
Season seven of Perfect Duluth Day’s “Saturday Essay” series has drawn to close, and it’s time to look back with the usual popularity contest. In 2021, Jim Richardson pulled off an unprecedented sweep of the top-five most read essays; this year he remained the click hog, but holds a more reasonable three out of five works deemed by Google Analytics to be your favorites.
Next week we’ll highlight a few “select gems” judged by attributes other than page views, but this week it’s all about which ones had the most people tap the Read More button.
Lakeview Castle, 5135 North Shore Drive in Duluth Township, got its start circa 1914 as a fish stand and coffee shop, eventually growing into a restaurant, lounge and motel.
It ceased operation at the end of 2009 and the Clearwater Grille opened there in the fall of 2010.
Among the legible signs in this undated postcard: Hill Hotel, Hamm’s Beep, bus station, Holland Hotel, Lyceum Theatre, Spalding Hotel, Saratoga Hotel, Hotel Tavern, Dove Clothing Store.
I saw a ship a-sailing
From old Duluth one day,
And oh! it was all laden
With coats for boys, they say!
In the category of “Best Name for a Parking Lot,” we have a winner.
Fifty years ago today Duluth’s Krummel family appeared in a Maytag washing machine advertisement. It was in the Nov. 17, 1972 issue of Life magazine.
A flour mill fire in Superior caused more than $2.6 million in damage on Nov. 9, 1907 — 115 years ago today. The Duluth News Tribune referred to it as “the most disastrous fire in point of property loss, and probably the most spectacular blaze ever seen at the Head of the Lakes.”
The postcard shown above was mailed nine days after the fire. It was sent by someone named Frank to Master A. Pearson of Spokane, Wash. The photo apparently shows the smoldering remains of the Freeman Flour Mills and Elevator — Franks wrote “Fremon Mill” on the back of the card.
This postcard was mailed 110 years ago today — Nov. 7, 1912. A previous Perfect Duluth Day post featured a different version of the same card, mailed four months earlier. That post includes additional background info on the lighthouse.
Also previously noted on PDD, the remains of the lighthouse have remained in roughly the same condition for more than a century.
From the Museum of the Weird in Austin, Texas.
Fur Bearing Trout
Very Rare
Caught while trolling in Lake Superior off Gros Cap, near Sault Ste. Marie, District of Algoma.
It is believed that the great depth and the extreme penetrating coldness of the weather in which these fish live have caused them to grow their dense coat of (usually) white fur.
Mounted by Ross C. Jobe, Taxidermist of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
What better night than Halloween for the Duluth Rotary Club and Duluth Chamber of Commerce to hold their Home Products Dinner of 1912? Here’s the program from 110 years ago today.
Duluth Savings Bank was established on Oct. 30, 1902 — 120 years ago today — and took the name Northern National Bank in 1909, a year before the Alworth Building, Duluth’s tallest commercial high-rise, was built. Northern National Bank occupied the main floor of the Alworth. The card above jokes that 40 years before the Alworth a two-story structure on West Superior Street was “Duluth’s First Skyscraper.”
