Hartman House (Duluth Women‘s Club)
The Hartman residence photographed ca. 1912 by Hugh McKenzie. [Image: Duluth Women’s Club]
2400 E. Superior Street | Architect: Frederick Perkins | Built: 1910 | Extant
Architect Frederick Perkins’s first of five houses he would design for Duluth’s East End, this two-and-a-half-story brick Tudor Revival home was planned to fit Duluth’s sloping hillside, with much of the house hidden from view along Superior Street. Its roof includes a M-shaped double-gabled pavilion along the front façade, with a portion of the western gable extended over the driveway, creating a sun porch off the second floor and a porte cochère below. The porch’s roof is supported by scroll-sawn brackets and the porch itself is faced with stucco and half-timbering, with more half-timbering found on the house’s gabled dormers. A Roman arch leads through a covered entryway to the front door, also cased within a Roman arch. A large, two-story wing rising from the basement level covers most of the rear of the house and originally featured a large open porch off the first floor. The house was commissioned by Alexander and Katherine “Kittie” Hartman. A native of Shakopee, Minnesota, Hartman came to Duluth in 1884 when he was twenty, later forming the Hartman Electric Company. After several mergers he eventually became vice-president of Minnesota Power. In 1899 he married Katherine “Kittie” Chapin Gamble, a native of Saginaw, Michigan, and adopted her nine-year-old son Telford. The Hartmans lived in the house until Alexander’s death in 1936, after which Kittie moved; she died in 1943. The house has been the home of the Duluth’s Women’s Club since 1937.
