June 13, 1913: Property owners propose changing name of St. Croix Avenue

On this day in Duluth in 1913, property owners in what we now consider “Canal Park” proposed to not only pave St. Croix Avenue (today’s Canal Park Drive) but to also rename the street to disassociate it from its “former associations.” That association was Duluth’s long-established “red light district” or “Tenderloin” in what was then called Up Town. The Zenith City’s Tenderloin was located along the 200 block of St. Croix Avenue and its alley between Sutphin Street and Railroad Street, south of Heimbach Lumber. Nearly all the buildings in this square are marked on insurance maps as “FB” or “Female Boarding House,” code for brothel. Other boarding houses and hotels almost certainly saw their share of prostitution, but the “regular” ladies worked this unofficial zone. West of the Tenderloin, Lake Avenue was lined with industry; east of St. Croix Avenue was known as “Finn Town”—and even the Finns living there in the 1890s called St. Croix Avenue Rottakatu or “Rat Avenue.” The city, lead by Public Safety Commissioner John Hicken and Police Chief Chauncy Troyer, was moving prostitution out of the area, and property owners wanted to expand the wholesale district on the west side off Lake Avenue. They proposed changing the name to Culver Avenue to honor Duluth’s first mayor, J. B. Culver, but ended up calling it South First Avenue East. In the 1980s South First Avenue East became Canal Park Drive.

The Samps Hotel, later the First Avenue Hotel, part of the “St. Croix District,” Duluth’s “Tenderloin” or “Red Light District” from the 1880s until the 1930s, photographed in 1962. The building was constructed in 1906 and demolished in 1972. (Image: University of Minnesota Duluth Kathryn A. Martin Library Archives and Special Collections)