St. Luke’s Hospital (1883)
The 1883 St. Luke’s Hospital. (Image: Duluth Public Library)
323 2nd Avenue East | Architect: George Wirth | Built: 1883 | Lost: ca. 1920
When the first St. Luke’s proved too small to meet the needs of Duluth’s ill and injured just a year or two after it opened, St. Luke’s constructed a new thirty-eight bed facility on the corner of Fourth Street and Second Avenue East (above, date unknown). The simple two-story frame building featured a gabled roof, a porch overlooking the city and harbor, many windows, and an entrance on Second Avenue. The Duluth News Tribune congratulated the management for providing a hospital “with everything necessary for the caring of the sick and wounded.” By 1900, caring for those sick and wounded again called for a larger building. When the new St. Luke’s opened at Ninth Avenue East and First Street in 1902, the Second Avenue hospital became a rooming house until about 1920, when it was demolished; no other structures have been built on the site. The 1902 building still stands, but is hardly recognizable amidst the sprawling campus of facilities owned by St. Luke’s.
