Architecture Archives - Perfect Duluth Day

Mid-century modern work highlighted in Duluth home tour

Sep 15, 2022 No Comments

The Hart House at 1545 Skyline Drive soon after construction was completed in 1952. The Chester Bowl ski jump can be seen in the background to the left of the house. (Photo courtesy of Aethan Hart)

The legendary Frank Lloyd Wright may not have been the architect but his influence is all over a striking little house tucked into a wooded lot just around the bend from Chester Park.

Known as the Hart house, the property at 1545 Skyline Parkway will be one of six featured homes in the 2022 Duluth Preservation Alliance Historic Properties Tour beginning at 11 am Sunday, Sept. 18. The annual event allows ticket holders to roam around inside some of the most beautiful homes in the city, this year featuring a collection of unusual mid-century modern works.

Duluth’s Ten Most Endangered Places in 2022

Aug 28, 2022 2 Comments

The Duluth Preservation Alliance has announced its 2022 list of the ten most endangered places. The intention is to raise awareness about historic properties that are likely to be lost. The organization previously released endangered properties lists in 2021 and 2017. An interactive story map for the 2022 list is available at arcgis.com.

A look at the two-level infill house in West Duluth

Apr 12, 2022 3 Comments

Enter, a digital biweekly publication from the creators of Architecture MN magazine, takes a look at “a new prototype for building affordable houses on narrow lots in Duluth.”

News and Current Affairs Architecture, West Duluth

Former ‘RecyclaBell’ recycled into apartments

Oct 26, 2021 3 Comments

Developer Mike Poupore stands outside the historic Northwestern Bell Telephone building at 1804 E. First St. The building housed the RecyclaBell all-ages music venue from 1993-1997. (Photo by Mark Nicklawske)

A look inside a newly-restored building that helped foster the 1990s Duluth indie rock scene is featured in a series of historic property video tours launched on the internet this week.

The Duluth Preservation Alliance explores changes in five iconic properties that once served city businesses and local government during a 2021 Virtual Historic Properties Tour available now on its website. The project provides a first look inside the newly remodeled Northwestern Bell telephone exchange building at 1804 E. First St. — which later housed an unlikely but locally significant music venue called the RecyclaBell from 1993 to 1997.

Duluth’s Ten Most Endangered Properties in 2021

Sep 25, 2021 3 Comments

The Duluth Missabe and Iron Range Railway Dock #5 has not been used since 1985. The Duluth Preservation Alliance has listed it as an endangered property. (Photos by Mark Nicklawske)

A slowly disappearing neighborhood rich in Native American history, a large building once home to a radical labor college and an iconic, unused iron ore dock are included in a list of places historians fear may disappear from the Duluth landscape.

The Duluth Preservation Alliance released a Top 10 Most Endangered Places list during an event outside the soon-to-be demolished Esmond Building in Lincoln Park Saturday, Sept. 25. The list, regularly compiled by the group, is designed to raise preservation awareness and encourage the reuse of historic properties.

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

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.

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.

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