May 22, 1925: The Hotel Duluth celebrates its grand opening

On this day in Duluth in 1925, the Hotel Duluth kicked off a two-day celebration of the hotel’s grand opening. The building’s organizers scheduled a lavish celebration, inviting 400 couples that included delegations from the Iron Range, Twin Cities, Milwaukee, and Chicago. The Duluth Symphony Orchestra, directed by Fred G. Bradbury, played in the lobby throughout the event. The dinner menu included hors-d’oeuvres Moscovite, hearts of celery, mixed olives, pecans, cream of fresh mushroom chantilly, paupiette of sole marguery, roast squab, potatoes Gaufrette and other delicacies. After dinner the Lyceum Ballroom Orchestra, directed by Frank Mainella, and the Ben Miller Orchestra provided dance music. The Hotel Duluth actually first opened for guests on May 8, 1925. George H. Crosby, called “the father of the Hotel Duluth,” was the first to sign the register, Walter Schroeder (its owner) the third, and architect H. W. Tullgren next. Dinner parties were held in both the English and Moorish rooms, with Schroeder exclaiming that, “This is the most beautiful hotel lobby in the country and Duluthians should be proud of this institution. The hotel is a great civic project and should have the support of every man and woman in the city. The people have been clamoring for a new hotel for many years and now they have an institution that compares with the best in the country.” The Duluth Herald said that the hotel had the “typical atmosphere of the east. The paper went on to describe the building as “a bit of New York transplanted to the Northwest…. From the lobby to the 14th floor Hotel Duluth is essentially metropolitan.” It was compared to other grand hotels in the U.S., including New York’s Commodore and Roosevelt and Chicago’s Blackstone. Read much more about the Hotel Duluth here.

A postcard of the Hotel Duluth published in the 1950s. (Image: Zenith City Press)