Architecture Archives - Perfect Duluth Day

Duluth’s ‘Mushroom House’ looks for new owner

Aug 20, 2021 No Comments

The “Mushroom House” near the University of Minnesota Duluth is for sale. (All photos via realtor.com)

When it comes to houses, Duluth is noted for the grand, turn-of-the-century mansions clinging to the Lake Superior shoreline or more modern places with stunning hilltop views but there are unique gems sprinkled throughout the city and one of them is on the market.

“The Mushroom House,” located at 1401 Mississippi Ave., just northwest of the University of Minnesota Duluth campus, was listed for sale Aug. 9. The five-bedroom, three-bath home was built in 1971 in a striking triple-dome shape that seems to grow out of its wooded, half-acre lot. The listed price is $279,900.

CBS Sunday Morning: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mäntylä House, formerly of Cloquet, reassembled in Pennsylvania

Jun 27, 2021 No Comments

A piece of Cloquet history popped up on CBS Sunday Morning today, but it’s in Cloquet no more. Mäntylä House, designed by visionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, has been rebuilt at Polymath Park in southwest Pennsylvania. In the video, CBS Correspondent Lee Cowan talks with the park’s proprietors, and with the Minnesota couple whose home was moved, piece by piece.

History Architecture, CBS, Cloquet, Frank Lloyd Wright

Congdon Park’s historic Millen mansion gets needed overhaul

May 28, 2020 3 Comments

Tom Buresh and his terrier-dachshund mix, Evealine, pose on a hill outside the historic Millen mansion on Vermilion Road. Buresh and his wife Debra purchased the home in October 2017 and are restoring the property. (Photos by Mark Nicklawske).

Tom Buresh likes to say that shortly after he bought one of the most glorious and historic mansions in Duluth a neighbor told him it came with 40 years of deferred maintenance.

Sinclair Lewis / John G. Williams House

Jul 30, 2019 No Comments

Cade Imaging of Maplewood provides this short, sweeping aerial video of the Duluth mansion best known as the home of Nobel-prize winning writer Sinclair Lewis during the 1940s.

R.I.P. Cesar Pelli, architect of UMD’s Weber Music Hall

Jul 22, 2019 1 Comment

News and Current Affairs, R.I.P. Architecture, UMD

Duluth Urban Forest Architecture

May 29, 2019 1 Comment

Found under construction in the Norton Park neighborhood.

Photos Architecture

Congdon Pumphouse highlights historic home tour

Sep 01, 2018 1 Comment

A 19th Century Duluth pump house was converted into living space by Elisabeth Congdon in 1937. The property will be open during the Duluth Preservation Alliance Historic Property Tour Sept. 16.

Duluth has dozens of spectacular waterfront properties with amazing Lake Superior views but only one home has a front porch featuring metal wave deflectors and living room windows equipped with hurricane shutters.

World’s only Frank Lloyd Wright service station

Nov 08, 2017 No Comments

The R. W. Lindholm Service Station at 202 Cloquet Ave. in Cloquet, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1956 and opened in 1958, is still in use. These photos are from late 1950s and early 1960s.

History, Photos Architecture, Cloquet

Historic home tour offers rare look into original Tweed Museum

Sep 04, 2017 No Comments

Duluth Preservation Alliance boardmember Dennis Lamkin, left, and homeowner Leslie Broadway stand along a newly installed garden outside the Tweed House in Chester Park. The home is part of the Duluth Preservation Alliance Historic Properties Tour Sept. 17.

The largest art museum in Duluth started on the first floor of a Chester Park home but the glamorous history was hardly recognizable when Jared and Leslie Broadway purchased the property six years ago.

“It was just a room you passed through to get upstairs,” said Leslie, as she led visitors into the 103-year-old Tweed House at 2531 E. Seventh St. “Jared had his exercise equipment down here.”

Working with Duluth preservationist Dennis Lamkin and a stable of contractors, the couple transformed the dreary ground floor basement back into a place for treasured art and lively social gatherings. The public will get a rare look at the historic gallery during the 32nd annual Duluth Preservation Alliance Historic Properties Tour on Sunday, Sept. 17.

Gunnar Birkerts, Duluth Public Library architect, dead at 92

Aug 18, 2017 1 Comment

Gunnar Birkerts, a Latvian-born architect who extended the vocabulary of Modernism using unexpected angular forms, folding planes and ingenious, light-suffused interiors, died on Tuesday at his home in Needham, Mass. He was 92.

Duluth’s Ten Most Endangered Properties in 2017

Mar 14, 2017 No Comments

From a hidden stairway to the original rail line servicing the city, Duluth is not “anyplace, USA,” the Duluth Preservation Alliance announced in a news release. “It is home to an abundance of historic buildings and sites.”

To bring awareness to some of the city’s most threatened properties, the DPA put out its list of “Duluth’s Ten Most Endangered Properties in 2017.”

1. Pastoret Terrace
131 E. First St.
What began as luxury townhouses in 1887 has since been divided into multiple apartments. In 2010, the Terrace experienced a devastating fire and currently sits as a fraction of its former glory. Now owned by the city, it could be razed, or it could be renovated and be a catalyst that helps revive First Street.

Tallest Structure in Duluth

Jul 17, 2012 34 Comments

Here’s a question to contemplate: What is the tallest standing structure within Duluth city limits?

Here’s what I was thinking for determining this: The tallest height should be relative to the starting point of the structure in the ground. So a structure that begins on a higher elevation does not have advantage. Also, “ground” can be defined as the Lake bottom, so a structure could begin on the Lake bottom, but the footings (or anything underneath the ground [or Lake bottom]) wouldn’t be part of the equation.

The Duluth Arial Lift Bridge is pretty high (177 feet), but other higher buildings and structures are clearly in view.

Random Architecture, Geeky, John A. Blatnik Bridge, Queries

Ensculptic — Minnetrista, Minnesota

Jan 13, 2011 16 Comments

The name of this house is “Ensculptic,” which is short for “environmental sculpture in plastic.” Most people prefer to call it the “Mushroom House,” “Flintstone House,” “Hobbit House” or simply “That Weird House in Minnetrista.”

The place is now known as “The Foam House” on Houselogic’s “7 Crazy Houses” list.

Videos Architecture, Geeky, Weird

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