Left:
Cormier Dry Goods, 6227 Grand Ave., West Duluth, in 1907.
(Northeast Minnesota Historical Center photo.)
Right:
The same building in 2010, now entirely apartments.
(Perfect Duluth Day photo.)
Cormier Dry Goods stayed in business well into the 1930s. Gustave Cormier was the proprietor and lived upstairs. By the mid-1930s, J.A. Lundeen’s shoe store shared the building.
I recently came across this photograph of myself observing graffiti at an I-35 underpass in West Duluth, probably from 1997 or 1998. So I went back and rephotographed the spot to show how the graffiti has changed.
As you can see, this picture is dated 1919. The girls look to be of elementary school age, so maybe one of them is still around today.
The location of the picture is the old Denfeld High School on Central Avenue, which is now Laura MacArthur Elementary School. There must have been elementary classes in the old Denfeld, or these are just random kids from the neighborhood, because none of them look old enough to be in high school.
The old Denfeld/MacArthur building will be torn down after the new MacArthur is built, but hopefully the old house in the background will keep on keepin’ on.
The Lake Superior Zoo used to have a big slide, among other toys for the kiddies. I took a ride on it in the late 1970s with my big sister, as seen in this photo.
