Fred W. Erickson, Duluth Grocer
This postcard image shows the Fred W. Erickson grocery store at 2029 and 2031 W. Third St. in Duluth.
This postcard image shows the Fred W. Erickson grocery store at 2029 and 2031 W. Third St. in Duluth.
The Providence Building, 332 West Superior Street, 11:11 a.m.
The first post in this series looked at locations along Superior Street that have gone largely unchanged over the past 60 years. This set of 10 photos looks at locations where the difference between 1963 and 2023 are a bit more evident. In some cases, that is because of major developments like the Gateway Renewal Program, the Holiday Center, the Skywalk system or the I-35 extension. In other instances, it is simply because at some point the building acquired a new façade.
In 1963 an unknown photographer systematically photographed Superior Street, capturing downtown buildings and businesses on both sides. Ninety-five of these images have been preserved on the Minnesota Reflections website.
Recent work on the Duluth Plumbing Supply building at 322 W. Michigan St. — now SPS Companies — has made more visible the words painted on the back side more than a century ago. The bottom line reads “Wholesale Flour, Feed, Grain and Hay.” The top line originally read “Wright-Clarkson Mercantile Co.” but appears to have later been painted over with some other words.
The old-timey photo is via Shorpy and is dated “circa 1905.” St. Louis County property tax records list the building as constructed in 1910, but that’s potentially not accurate.
Sometime back, I included an aerial photo in a PDD comment and realized that because they are taken from straight overhead, the photos on Minnesota Historical Aerial Photographs Online can be matched up pretty easily with Google’s current aerial imagery. And then I put that thought aside for quite some months until I finally came back to it and put together this seven-part series of aerial photos showing places in Duluth that have changed somewhat dramatically over the past decades.
Here’s a look at a pair of East Fourth Street buildings — one soon to be demolished, another already lost to history. The photos on the left in the side-by-sides above are from Oct. 22, 2011. The ones on the right are from Oct. 22, 2021.
Top: Kozy Apartments on Nov. 17, 2010 — two days after a fire.
Bottom: Kozy Apartments on Nov. 17, 2020 — 16 days after a fire.
The top half of the graphic above is from a real estate advertisement in the Oct. 22, 1920 edition of the Duluth Herald, promoting lots on 43rd Avenue West near Eighth Street in West Duluth. The bottom half is an attempt to capture the modern perspective via Google Maps. In the modern view, trees block three of the four homes shown in the 1920 view, but one of them can been seen and the other three, though not in view, are still standing.
In this video, photographer Kip Praslowicz revisits Duluth locations he shot photos of in 2010 in order to shoot 2020 versions.
One of the photos near the end of the video caught our eye at Perfect Duluth Day because Paul Lundgren shot a similar photo in 2010 from a different angle, showing a perspective that might have easily been forgotten.
One hundred years is a long time, and the Duluth of one hundred years ago can seem like a place without much connection to the present. But whether we are aware of them or not, elements of the past always carry over into the present. As an illustration of that, these five images, taken by Duluth photographer Hugh McKenzie and included in UMD’s Kathryn A. Martin Library Archives and Special Collections, show the city’s neighborhood telephone exchanges in 1920. Shown individually below, they are followed by the most recent Google Streetview image of the same location.
Even if you’re not a history nerd, you’ve got to admire the effort put into finding and recreating these photos and the point of view. The images are from John McLoughlin’s @duluth_then_and_now account on Instagram.
The above photo was shot on Aug. 29, 2009 at the Blue Crab Bar, 1909 W. Superior St. Today it is the location of OMC Smokehouse. The photo below, shot Aug. 29, 2019, attempts to replicate the scene.
Lars Waldner posted this circa 1916 image to Facebook, tagging PDD. It’s kind of a bizarre angle on Duluth, and for some reason identifying buildings in the photo is exceptionally challenging. The only cheater we’re given is the big sign on the side of Rust-Parker Wholesale Grocery Company, which was at 217 S. Lake Ave.
The above photo, submitted by Jay Sonnenburg, shows businesses on the 400 block of West Superior Street. At right is the WEBC Radio studio. At left are the Fargusson Building, Manhattan Building and Spalding Hotel.
