Loeb House
The 1923 Loeb residence photographed by Hugh McKenzie, date unknown. [Image: UMD Martin Library]
2407 E. Fifth Street | Architect: Francis H. Fitzgerald | Built: 1923 | Extant
Scottish-born architect Francis Fitzgerald came to Duluth in 1913 after working for a number of prestigious firms, including Chicago’s D. H. Burnham & Company. His few known Duluth works include the 1921 Ridgeview County Club and this L-shaped, two-story stucco-covered Mediterranean Revival home along the upper 2400 block of East Fifth Street. Capped with a hipped roof covered in red clay tiles, the house includes Roman-arch windows along the first
floor and a wrought-iron balcony on the second, perched in front of a Roman-arch doorway with a fanlight transom. The main entrance is positioned along the house’s western side, accessed by a veranda surrounded by a stone balustrade. The house contains more than four thousand square feet and includes an office, five bedrooms, five bathrooms, and a single fireplace with an elaborately carved mantle.
Fitzgerald designed the house for Indiana natives Louis and Cecelia Loeb. Loeb was twenty-six when he arrived at Duluth, where his brother Samuel had opened a clothing store three years earlier. Loeb and Bernard Heller opened a liquor wholesale business which later became the L. S. & S. Loeb company when he began partnering with his brother. The Loeb Brothers eventually got into real estate, buying buildings and constructing a few of their own, including the Metropole Hotel and Astoria Hotel, also known as the Loeb Block. He would later sit on the board of directors of Duluth’s Northern National Bank. Loeb married Cecelia Keller in 1895 and the following year Cecelia gave birth to their daughter, Dorothy. In 1900 the couple hired John Wangenstein—who designed both hotels mentioned above—to create a Neoclassical home for them at 1123 East Superior Street, which stood until 2011. The Loebs moved into their new home in 1923, but didn’t stay long. Louis died in 1928 and the next year Cecelia moved to Manhattan. Duluth Clinic surgeon Theo L. Chapman and wife, Katharine, purchased the house in 1930 and stayed until they moved in 1947. The house has continued to serve as a private residence ever since.
