Chisholm House

The Chisholm House ca. 1903, photographer unknown [Image: Zenith City Press]

1832 E. Second Street | Architect: Unknown | Built: 1902 | Extant

Canadian Archie Chisholm came to the U.S. as a boy, eventually finding work in iron mines. In 1888 he turned twenty-four and moved to Minnesota’s Vermilion Range to work as paymaster for the Chandler and Ely Mines while investing in banking, mining, and real estate. He eventually developed the Chisholm Mine and the town of Chisholm. In 1891 he married Eulalie “Lillian” Cummings of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and together they had three children. The Chisholms moved to Duluth and in 1902 built a grand three-story brick home at the southwest corner of Nineteenth Avenue East and Second Street. The house was essentially a classic American Foursquare dressed up with Neoclassical elements, including two-story fluted Corinthian columns that rose from the front porch to support a second-story covered veranda and an attic-level veranda as well as combination hipped/eyebrow dormers that poked through the roof. Archie died in 1933, after which Lillian moved in with her son, Archie Jr. In 1937 Lillian donated use of the house to the Duluth Children’s Museum, established in 1930 by Mabel McKinney Wing. The museum was renamed the A. M. Chisholm Museum, and after Lillian died in 1954, the family gave the house to the organization. In 1975 the museum moved out of the house, which then became home for boys operated by the Hills Youth and Family Services. The building has been severely altered, and the entire front porch is gone, covered in vinyl siding; it is now a rental house.

To see modern exterior and interior photographs of this house and learn more about its architecture, visit Twin Ports Past’s post about the house HERE.