History
Breaking Ice to Bring in Freighters on the 20th of January
This postcard, published by the Hugh C. Leighton Company, was never mailed and has no year marked on it, but the caption on the front would indicate the illustration is based on a photo shot on Jan. 20 of some year in the early 1900s.
Whether the artist drew people standing on the edge of the ice as a creative choice or whether they were really standing there is not known, unless the photo exists somewhere. Either way, file the act of walking out to ice breakers in the “no, don’t do that” category.
Matchbooks from Duluth Restaurants and Bars
Perfect Duluth Day published its first gallery of Duluth-area matchbooks in 2015. Since then, the collection has grown significantly. This new post features only matchbooks from bars and restaurants in Duluth. Some of them have been pulled out of the original post and placed in this new post; others are appearing for the first time.
Enjoy the nostalgia and, whatever you do, for the love of humanity, please close cover before striking. (more…)
PDD Quiz: Snow Foolin’
Step up to this week’s quiz and test your knowledge of snow-related events, celebrations and disasters.
As with all history-related quizzes, the Minnesota Reflections and the Zenith City websites were indespensible resources.
The next PDD quiz, reviewing headlines from January 2021, will be coming your way on Jan. 31. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Jan. 26. (more…)
Clark House Hotel, West Superior Street circa 1870
This uncredited photo, presumably shot by Paul B. Gaylord, shows the 100 block of West Superior Street in Downtown Duluth looking northeast. The Clark House Hotel, in the foreground at left, was Duluth’s second hotel, opening in July 1870. (more…)
Postcard from London Manor Motel
This undated postcard, published by Gallagher’s Studio of Photography, shows the London Manor Motel, one of several lodging businesses that comprised London Road’s old “Motel Row.”
London Manor was built in 1955 and later became the Chalet Motel, which was torn down in 2011. A Sherwin-Williams paint store was built at the location in 2019. (more…)
Postcard from Duluth’s Hotel Lenox
This undated postcard, published by E. C. Kropp Co. of Milwaukee, highlights some of the features of the Hotel Lenox in Downtown Duluth. The hotel was torn down in the 1960s. (more…)
Mystery Photo: Trolley Car and Conductors
This undated postcard photo of two conductors standing next to a trolley car comes with a few details. The trolley car has a destination sign that reads: “W. Dul. & Aerial Bridge.” And the word “Duluth” is handwritten on the back of the card. (more…)
Avant-Garde Women: Michele Bernstein, Queen of the Situationists
The video below is from a 1960 French TV interview about Michele Bernstein’s subversive novel “All the King’s Horses”. Yes this is in French, which I cannot follow. The auto-translation isn’t much better. It’s sort of a friendly verbal chess match. At around 2:30 the interviewer asks her something about having respect for her literary forebears. She replies: “We each import our own small stone to the cathedral.” Asked what novel she can compare hers to, she replies, “I don’t know; if it is simply a novel we can compare it to all that exist.”
Boats Docked at Duluth Harbor Circa 1875
Photographers William Caswell and William Henry Davy ran a studio in Duluth circa 1870-75 and were responsible for many of the stereographs circulated during the era. The image above shows boats docked somewhere in the Duluth Harbor. (more…)
Mystery Photo: Duluth Residence in 1910
Based on the postmark and the last line of the scrawled message on the back, we might presume this image is of a Duluth house in 1910. What is the address? Is it still standing? Let the mystery solving begin. (more…)
Enjoying the Glorious Climb-it of Duluth
Oh, those wacky puns. This postcards was mailed from Duluth 115 years ago today — Dec. 26, 1905. It arrived in Newark, N.J. three days later, and eventually at the home of Mr. L. Volland. (more…)
Postcard from Drill’s Arena Marina
This undated postcard from Gallagher’s Studio of Photography appears to be circa 1971. (more…)
Aerial Transfer Bridge circa 1905
This image of Duluth’s Aerial Bridge, from Detroit Publishing Company, appears to have been shot during one of the first ferry-car transfers across the canal. The Library of Congress dates the images as 1905 … with a question mark. (more…)
What’s the deal with the stairway at Birchwood Park that leads down into a ravine?
On the edge of Birchwood Park, a small playground park at 222 W. Heard St. in the New Duluth neighborhood, is an old stairway down to a ravine that I’m guessing runs into Sargent Creek. The existence of this stairway is probably common knowledge in New Duluth, but it is kind of tucked away so that others visiting the park are unlikely to notice. And it raises the question of what used to be down there. (more…)
Mystery Photo #127: Miss Victoria Benson
Often we don’t know who is the subject of these old studio photos, but this time it’s written on the back. So we know this is Marie Victoria Benson of 2801 W. Second St. in Duluth’s friendly West End. (Or is it 2301?) She later became Mrs. Edward Cluett. (more…)
PDD Video Lab: On the Great Lakes
In this edition of the PDD Video Lab we’ve taken mid-20th Century Duluth footage from the National Archive and set it to the title track from the 2017 Ingeborg von Agassiz album O Giver of Dreams. (more…)
Postcard from a Warship in the Duluth-Superior Harbor
This undated postcard, published by Zenith Interstate News Company, shows the USS Forrest Sherman Destroyer-931 docked on Rice’s Point in Duluth, with the Peavey grain elevator in the background. (more…)
Avant-Garde Women: The Shakespearean Tragedy of Peggy and Pegeen Guggenheim
The story of Peggy and Pegeen Guggenheim, as told by the Situationist painter Ralph Rumney, reads like Shakespeare: court intrigue, backstabbing, madness, and suicide. Rumney’s book The Consul provides a critical point of view on this fraught mother-daughter relationship cracking up at the cutting edge of the art world.
On Board a Great Lakes Freighter
The film above was discovered with no info such as who shot it, or when and where the scenes were captured. It clearly features Duluth at the beginning and end, however, and appears to be circa 1937. (more…)
Eastman Johnson in the Arrowhead Region
I stumbled on the fascinating story of Eastman Johnson’s time in the Arrowhead Region, and thought Perfect Duluth Day’s historians might weigh in on him. The above landscape, in charcoal, chalk and gouache on paper, shows Superior as viewed from a trading post on Park Point in 1857. After painting portraits of luminaries such as Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow and Abe Lincoln, then studying art in Europe, Johnson traveled to Superior, where he had relatives. In 1856 he lived in a log cabin on Pokegema Bay, in what is now the Superior Municipal Forest. (more…)
Postcards from U.S. Naval Reserve Training Ship Gopher
The undated postcards here show the USS Gopher at Duluth. The vessel had a 34-year history on the East Coast as the USS Fern before being renamed Gopher on Dec. 27, 1905, when it began duty with the Minnesota Naval Militia in Duluth. (more…)
Herman Magnusson’s Reinforced Concrete Clothes Poles
Duluthians who have clothesline poles like the one in this advertisement are displaying the work of a gig-economy pioneer. There’s probably not a lot of this type of century-old ornamental concrete lawn stuff still hanging around, but it was certainly made to last and would be likely to survive just about anything except falling out of fashion.
The advertising flier dates to the mid 1920s and comes to Perfect Duluth Day via Jolee Edmondson of Savannah, Ga. She’s a granddaughter of Herman Enoch Magnusson, Duluth maker of “concrete bird baths, seats, benches and clothes line poles.” (more…)