On this day in Duluth in 1891, Methodists gathered to lay the cornerstone of the 1893 First Methodist Church at 215 North Third Avenue West during a ceremony the Duluth News Tribune described as “very solemn and fitting character.”The new building would replace the congregation’s original 1873 wooden church, which stood nearby at the northwest corner of Third Avenue West and Second Street. Designed by the Duluth architectural firm of McMillen & Radcliffe, the large Gothic church of red brownstone was an imposing structure. Built for $120,000 (or nearly $3 million today) the church had a tall square corner tower with belfry and a shorter tower along the avenue. A Gothic window faced Third Avenue and a stained-glass rose window graced the Third Street façade. It sat 1,600 people. After the new church opened in 1893, he 1873 building was dismantled, moved to Virginia, Minnesota, and reassembled as Virginia’s First Methodist Church. In 1966 the congregation—which had become First United Methodist— Church moved to it’s new location along Skyline Parkway nicknamed the “Coppertop Church.” The 1893 building was demolished three years later. Learn more about the 1873 and 1893 churches here.
The 1893 First Methodist Church. (Image: Zenith City Press)odist
This Saturday, September 16, Duluth’s new Zenith Bookstore at 318 North Central Avenue in West Duluth—next to Beaner’s Central—will host a Grand Opening Book Fair in its parking lot from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Zenith City Press will be setting up shop at the fair, with all our our titles discounted from 25 to…
Superior, Wisconsin, was organized as a city in 1854, just a year after the first log cabin was built along the shores of the Nemadji River. Less than two years later—in January, 1856—Superior’s residents were calculating how many school-age children lived in the community and, therefore, how many schools it needed to build. The Fairbrass…
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