Duluth MN History from Perfect Duluth Day

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

Dec 30, 2020 13 Comments

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.

Mystery Photo: Duluth Residence in 1910

Dec 28, 2020 10 Comments

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.

Enjoying the Glorious Climb-it of Duluth

Dec 26, 2020 No Comments

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.

Postcard from Drill’s Arena Marina

Dec 23, 2020 No Comments

This undated postcard from Gallagher’s Studio of Photography appears to be circa 1971.

Aerial Transfer Bridge circa 1905

Dec 22, 2020 No Comments

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.

What’s the deal with the stairway at Birchwood Park that leads down into a ravine?

Dec 21, 2020 4 Comments

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.

History Gary-New Duluth, Queries

Video Archive: Gap ad with Low’s “Little Drummer Boy”

Dec 20, 2020 No Comments

Few would expect Perfect Duluth Day to present a Gap television commercial as content, but it’s pretty Duluthy. Twenty years ago the global clothing and accessories retailer featured music by Duluth band Low in its holiday ad. The song appeared on Low’s Christmas EP, released a year prior.

History, Music, Videos Christmas, Low, Video Archive

Mystery Photo #127: Miss Victoria Benson

Dec 20, 2020 6 Comments

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.

History, Photos Mystery Photos

PDD Video Lab: On the Great Lakes

Dec 16, 2020 No Comments

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.

Postcard from a Warship in the Duluth-Superior Harbor

Dec 15, 2020 1 Comment

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.

Avant-Garde Women: The Shakespearean Tragedy of Peggy and Pegeen Guggenheim

Dec 10, 2020 No Comments

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

Dec 10, 2020 3 Comments

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.

Eastman Johnson in the Arrowhead Region

Dec 10, 2020 1 Comment

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.

Art, History Eastman Johnson

History Posts

Happy New Year from Duluth Lumberjacks

Avant-Garde Women: Michele Bernstein, Queen of the Situationists

Boats Docked at Duluth Harbor Circa 1875

Mystery Photo: Duluth Residence in 1910

Enjoying the Glorious Climb-it of Duluth

Postcard from Drill’s Arena Marina

Aerial Transfer Bridge circa 1905

What’s the deal with the stairway at Birchwood Park that leads down into a ravine?

Video Archive: Gap ad with Low’s “Little Drummer Boy”

Mystery Photo #127: Miss Victoria Benson

PDD Video Lab: On the Great Lakes

Postcard from a Warship in the Duluth-Superior Harbor

Avant-Garde Women: The Shakespearean Tragedy of Peggy and Pegeen Guggenheim

On Board a Great Lakes Freighter

Eastman Johnson in the Arrowhead Region

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