West Duluth Porcupine Hotel
On Wednesday I saw this porcupine high at the top of a tree on Raleigh Street, feasting away on bark. Then on Thursday there were two of them (one up high, one down low).
On Wednesday I saw this porcupine high at the top of a tree on Raleigh Street, feasting away on bark. Then on Thursday there were two of them (one up high, one down low).
I first took notice of this graffiti in the late 1980s. It’s on the side of the old West Duluth Hotel building, which for many years now has been home to the Italian Village, along with various other businesses.
A Canadian National train carrying 17 empty cars derailed while approaching a limestone storage area on a trestle bridge near the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway Ore Docks this morning.
Two cars fell; one landed upside down, the other landed against a support for the ore docks and sat standing on its end. No one was hurt.
I should note that this guy is using climbing equipment, and he’d he dead if he wasn’t, because he fell about three minutes after this photo was taken.
Perhaps in another century people will pass around photos of you and try to piece together the details.
Who were these West Duluth guys? Did they all go fishing, or just the ones with their hats raised? Did they catch these 40+ fish on the St. Louis River or somewhere else? Did they have a boat?
Maybe none of that matters. What we know is that on one day in 1916 there was a mighty jubilant feast on Raleigh Street.
This is the view looking up from inside the new main entrance to Denfeld High School. The main floor of the new addition connects to the old building through the auditorium lobby. The main floor of the addition will include a new cafeteria and common area, administrative offices and media center.
Here are two historic photos of the Rentola, a Finnish boarding house at 4 N. 59th Ave. W., in West Duluth. The top photo is from Karl Hagglund, whose grandmother was a maid at the Rentola. The next photo is from 1961, courtesy of the Northeast Minnesota Historical Center. So the story goes, there was an old steam house nearby where Rentola residents took saunas.
This ad for Northern Natural Gas Company ran in Time magazine on Sept. 17, 1965. Hats off to Susie LeGarde Menz for the find.
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.
In 1994 I worked for six months at the Holiday Stationstore at 3401 Grand Ave., next to Wheeler Fields. The store closed around 2003 and the building is empty now. As you can imagine, there were a number of characters that frequented the store. One of them we called Turban Lady.
This post is a follow up to the post requesting information about Duluth’s old bowery district. The focus here is on Tom Madden, who managed to find himself in the news a lot. Set the Wayback Machine for 1891 and we’ll go in chronological order from there.
Dec. 13, 1891 | Duluth News Tribune
WILL IT BE MURDER?
——————————
Patrick Mulligan May Die From Injuries Received From Chief Madden.
Patrick Mulligan, who runs the “Little Diamond saloon on Central avenue, and who had his jaw broken a few days ago at the brickyard bagnio by a blow from ex Chief of Police Madden, was taken yesterday to St. Mary’s hospital, where he is now hovering between life and death. His jaw was set by Dr. Magie a day or two ago, but serious inflammation has set in, and the doctor said yesterday it would probably be necessary to put a silver tube in his throat to enable him to breathe. His case is a very serious one and the chances are even between life and death.
One of the stories that has long been passed around West Duluth is that, many years ago, perhaps the 1920s, some guys from the ol’ Raleigh Street Gang handcuffed a cop to a pole or a post and pinned his badge to his ass.
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.
G.B. Schneider Co. opened on Tuesday in the Denfeld Retail Center. It’s in the space formerly occupied by Grandma’s Grand Ave. Cafe. The focus is on comfort foods: ravioli, pot roast, meatloaf, etc.
This is the Helgeson family after church services on a Sunday in roughly 1940. They lived at 911 Central Ave. The parents are George and Rose. Their sons are G. Lewis, Robert, John and Paul.
