Posts by Tony Dierckins

This week’s dive into the ZCP archive takes us north of Duluth to Minnesota’s Vermilion and Mesabi Iron Ranges to examine the two commercial breweries that operated on the Range prior to Prohibition. It’s a brief but interesting tale, including an effort by publicly disgraced Duluth alderman Mike Fink—who started the Lake Superior Brewery and…

Luther Mendenhall first showed up in Duluth in 1869 along with George C. Stone and George Sargent, each holding a great deal of Jay Cook’s money (as well as their own). All three were sent to the Zenith City by Cooke to build the town’s infrastructure as Cooke’s Lake Superior & Mississippi was under construction.…

With all of the grain flowing through the Twin Ports in the late 19th-century, it only made sense to build some flour mills along their shores. Superior actually out did Duluth when it came to Flour mills when it came to the amount of mills operating withing their orders, , but the largest and most…

Scottish immigrant John Panton met his Irish counterpart Joseph Watson in the early 1880s when both worked for the Wm. Donaldson & Company dry goods store in Minneapolis, housed in the Glass Block building along Nicollet Avenue, known for its large plate-glass windows. The pair opened a dry goods store in Duluth in 1887, and…

This week’s archive dive presents an excerpt from the first chapter of Zenith City Press publisher Tony Dierckins’s Duluth: An Urban Biography, winner of the 2020/2021 Northeast Minnesota Book Award. Titled “Formed By Fire & Ice,” the excerpt explains the geological history of the far western end of Lake Superior, including how the lake was…

This week we dive into the archive to pull up some history on the pioneer brewers of Duluth and Superior. Brewing began in both communities in 1859, providing both a potent potable and jobs, as at the time the entire Head of the Lakes was struggling financially in the wake of the Panic of 1857.…

This week‘s dive into the Zenith City Press archive brings us to Duluth‘s far-western environs, home of Fond du Lac Park. Not only was the park once home to Duluth‘s municipal tree nursery and the seven bridges of Mission Creek Boulevard (mirroring the bridges of Seven Bridges Road nearly 28 miles to the east), but…

This week’s Archive Dive takes us inside our newest book, “Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940” to tell the story of Duluth’s Polish Catholics through its three Polish Catholic churches: St. Mary’s Star of the Sea, Stes. Peter & Paul, and St. Josephat. Together their stories include mistreatment by Duluth’s Irish and German Catholics, the local…

This week’s sneak peek at Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 still stands and continues to serve its original purpose. You may know it as that oddly shaped building tucked under Point of Rocks as you head down Mesaba Avenue to get to Superior Street or I-35. Discover much more about the 1911 Duluth Bethel HERE.…

This week’s sneak peek from Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1879–1940 started life as a private Catholic high school for girls called Villa Scholastica. Twenty or so years after it was built, it had been transformed via additions into Tower Hall—and the high school had evolved into the College of St. Scholastica. Read our history of…

This week’s sneak peek from Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1879–1940 still stands alongside the Lester River and the shore of Lake Superior. Read the history of the 1889 Lester River Fish Hatchery once produced 150 million fish eggs per year, helping to stock fish along the Minnesota North Shore and Wisconsin South Shore of Lake…

The first copies of Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture are rolling off the press right here in Duluth at J. S. Print Group. We are expecting to have books by Monday, August 15. It’s been a struggle, and paper costs have raised even higher than we expected—since 2020 paper costs have increased nine times; most stock…

After more then tens years after we began researching and writing Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture, the book is finally going to press this week right here in Duluth at J. S. Print Group. We are expecting to have books by Monday, August 15. It’s been a struggle, and paper costs have raised even higher than…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton—is one of the most unique homes to ever grace the Zenith City—and it was faced with natives stone excavated to while creating nearby streets. Discover much more about the Myers House HERE. (Preview Duluth’s Grand Old…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton—features the 1895 Duluth Board of Trade Building. Did you know that part of this building is now a portion of the Como Park Zoo Conservatory in St. Paul? Neither did we when we started researching this…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton—was built of native stone quarried at nearby Hunter’s Hill. Read our history of the Glen Avon Presbyterian from Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture here. Pre-order now and take advantage of our early bird specials! Just click here.

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton—takes us back to the 1890s, when booming Duluth got its first federal building, which served as the city’s post office, federal courts, customs office, and even weather station. The building, which stood in the heart of…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton—was the last train station  built in Duluth when it was constructed in 1910. By then Duluth had so many rail lines between Rice’s Point and what is now Canal Park that the railroad had to blast…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton (coming summer 2022)—is a rather small church built on a grand scale, and a key element in the story of the role Serbs played in Duluth’s development. Read our history of the 1924 house of worship…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton (coming summer 2022)—is the first brick municipal building constructed in Duluth—and it is still standing. Read our history of the Duluth Volunteer Fire Department’s Hall #1 from Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture here.

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton (coming summer 2022)—answers the often-asked question, “What’s that building?” Well, for starters, it helps provide Duluth with electricity. Read our history of the Great Norther Power Distribution Station from Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture here.

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton (coming summer 2022)—was built in 1914 as a small vaudeville house, but many Duluthians likely best remember the building as the longtime home of the Peterson-Anderson Flower Shop. Read our history of the Zelda Theater and…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton (coming summer 2022)—was built across the street from Duluth Central High School to serve the Duluth Y.M.C.A.’s Boys Department. Minnesota YWCA State Secretary E. W. Peck called the building “the most practical, most satisfactory and complete…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton (coming summer 2022)—is the magnificent Picturesque Stewart Creek Bridge, which carries West Skyline Parkway over the Stewart Creek east of Bardon’s Creek, one of over a dozen bridges, lighthouses, and park structures found in the book.…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton (coming summer 2022)—is the magnificent Neoclassical Style home Sophia and John Panton built at the northwest corner of Nineteenth Avenue East and Second Street in 1903, designed by renowned Minneapolis architects Cobourn & Kees. John Panton…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton (coming summer 2022)—was one of the first ornate brick buildings constructed in Duluth and first held a bank and hardware store operated by early Duluthian John Hunter, whose sons and son-in-law developed Hunter’s Park. The building…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton (coming summer 2022)—served as the church of Duluth’s First Church of Christ Scientist for 87 years and has been home to Karpele’s Manuscript Museum since 1999. Read our history of Duluth’s First Church of Christ, Scientist…

This week’s sneak peek at our newest book—Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton (coming summer 2022)—helped Duluthians predict the local weather from 1905 to 1959 and still stands today as a private home Read our history of the U.S. Weather Bureau Station from Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture here.

Happy 2022! On Mondays throughout 2022 we will be giving you a sneak peek at our newest book, Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870–1940 by Tony Dierckins and the late Maryanne C. Norton. We’re hoping to release the book in June, but meanwhile you can find out more about it here. For our first sneak peak…

Duluthians have been enjoying the legal right to purchase beer, booze, and wine on Sundays going on three years now, following the repeal of an 1856 law banning sales of liquor on Sunday throughout the state of Minnesota. But a quick look at the city’s history—particularly its first forty years—show that the Zenith City often…

First called Stearns Park, Duluth’s Lester Park was a gift to the city form the developers of Lakeside and Lester Park, which were annexed by Duluth in 1893. But Duluthians had been enjoying picnics, fishing, and much more along the Lester for many years before that. Read the history of what the the Duluth News Tribune…

If you’ve ever enjoyed a craft spirit at Vilkre Distillery inside the Gowan-Lenning-Brown building or a craft beer at Hoops Brewing inside the old Marshall-Wells Hardware office/warehouse, then you have visited most of what remains of Duluth’s once-thriving Jobbing industry, which today would likely be called “wholesaling.” Duluth once had a city of warehouses along…

The archive delivered a gem this week: A biography of Duluth-native Wally Gilbert, who played professional basketball, was a star on the legendary Duluth Eskimos of the early NFL, and was named the all-time best third basemen who ever suited up for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Read about the man the Duluth News Tribune once called…

Thoughts of passenger steamships often conjure images of luxurious crossings of the Atlantic by the well-to-do, and perhaps the poor immigrants crowded in the steerage compartment on there way to make new lives for themselves in America—or perhaps the tragic ends to the Titanic and Lusitania. But if you lived close to any of the…

In 1892 retired U. S. Cavalry officer Robert Augustus Torrey arrived in Duluth and promptly proceeded to pick out a lot on the lower 300 block of West Superior Street, hire Duluth’s premier architects, and build the Zenith City’s first “skyscraper”—a building that has continuously served Duluth for 122 years, and for about 30 years…

One of Duluth’s oldest public greenspaces, Lincoln Park was established in 1889 as the western anchor in the city’s plan to connect corridor parks created along streams and rivers with a carriage path along what was once the beach of ancient glacial Lake Duluth. (The eastern anchor was Garfield Park, known since the 1890s as…

Most Duluthians and plenty of visitors are familiar with Twin Ponds just east of Enger Park, but few realize they were engineered in the 1890s by damming Buckingham Creek. Fewer still know who Buckingham Creek was named for. Like most of Duluth’s creeks, Buckingham was named for an early resident who lived on or adjacent…

Duluth’s tourism industry began with and is hinged upon the city’s iconic Aerial Bridge, but what is often lost on visitors is that if there was not a ship canal to cross, there would be no bridge. If the people of Superior, Wisconsin, in the 1870s had their way, the canal would not exist. Read…

You may recognize the little building pictured below, which has stood at 3 West Superior Street since 1883 and received a restorative facelift just a few years ago. It was built as Bell & Eyster’s Bank, and while that institution has long since gone out of business, the  building remains as a reminder of the…

Duluth’s aerial bridge has been a tourist draw since the day it first opened as a transfer bridge in 1905, but few people who come to take a look at Duluth’s novel engineering marvel realize that iconic structure’s history is laced with tragic incidents, which you can read about in this week’s dive into the…

In the 1870s, the melancholic William K. Rodgers left Duluth to serve as the personal secretary of his friend and mentor, president Rutherford B. Hayes. He would return to the Zenith City in 1889 after laying out his vision for the nation’s most remarkable urban park system and became the controversial first president of Duluth’s…

The fluctuating iron mining industry has left its mark on Minnesota’s Iron Range, from lakes that were once pit mines, mini-mountain ranges of pile overburden, and abandoned towns that were once filled with miner’s and their families. This week we revisit the archive to pull out a story from contributor Dan Turner about many of…

Duluthians who often use Sixth Avenue East to get from the hillside to Central Entrance (or vice versa) have likely taken note of the tiny building on the west side of the road between Sixth and Seventh Street marked with the sign Storey Taxidermists. It was built by the son of Thomas H. Storey, a…

As the home to the North Shore Scenic Railroad and the Lake Superior Railroad Museum, Duluth’s 1892 Union Depot sees a lot of tourist traffic throughout the summer, but we wonder: How many visitors—or Duluthians, for that matter— know the history of that remarkable building? And so we’ve selected it as this week’s selection from…

Summer is an especially buy time for Glensheen, the historic Duluth state along Tischer Creek and the Lake Superior Shore built by Chester and Clara Congdon between 1905 and 1909. One of the often overlooked stories of Glensheen is why Chester Congdon purchased and donated land along the creek above his estate to the city…

From the early 1880s until about 1910, the nation’s lumber industry was centered on Duluth and Superior. In the mid 1890s thirty-two lumber mills operated along both sides of the St. Louis River in the Twin Ports. But by 1920, only one mill was operating in Duluth. How did the local lumber industry get its…

Have you ever wondered who LaVaque Road is named for? Heidi Bakk-Hansen did, so she researched Duluth’s pioneering LaVaque brothers and wrote a wonderful history of their lives in early Duluth. It’s this week’s selection from the Zenith City Archive, and you can read it here.

In 2006 a large piece of wooden cribbing washed up at the very northwest corner of Lake Superior in Duluth. Cribbing used in the 19th century was essentially a wood frame made of heavy timber that was sunk and filled with rocks to provide a foundation for docks, canal piers, breakwaters, and other structures. The…

Built in 1910, Duluth’s Alworth Building was the tallest building in the state of Minnesota. Named for the man who financed its construction and designed by renowned Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, the Alworth  remains today the tallest building in the Zenith City. Read a history of the Alworth here.

This week’s dive into the archive pulled out a notorious tale of an event that took place within Duluth’s landmark Hotel Duluth. It was August 1929 when a hungry black bear entered the hotel to enjoy a quick snack, but was interrupted by a heroic but inebriated Duluthian who was determined to keep the bruin…

If you’ve enjoyed Chambers Grove in Fond du Lac in the past few years, you may have walked the new interpretive trail takes you through what’s left of You say you’ve never heard of Duluth’s Grand Mountain? Well I bet you have—in fact, I bet most Duluthians have been there—but you likely know it better…

If you’ve enjoyed Chambers Grove in Fond du Lac in the past few years, you may have walked the new interpretive trail takes you through what’s left of Michael and Emily Chambers’ brownstone quarry. It was one of three operating near Fond du Lac from the 1870s to about 1910, producing stone that faced building…

John Hunter came to Duluth in 1869 to open a hardware and mercantile store and within a year found himself the Republican candidate in the new city’s first mayoral election. He and his family thrived in Duluth, and his sons went on to develop Duluth’s Hunter’s Park neighborhood. Read a history of the Hunters of…

If Duluth didn’t have its Ship Canal, it wouldn’t have its iconic Aerial Bridge—and it likely wouldn’t have become a great commercial shipping center nor enjoy today’s thriving tourism industry. From it’s legend-inspiring digging in 1870, the ship canal has shaped the city, and together with the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad was the key…

The Lester River Fish hatchery—that old Victorian building at the mouth of the Lester River—has caught the eye of many a passerby over the years, but few  know its history. It was the brainchild of Dr. Robert Ormsby Sweeney, a true Minnesota pioneer and somewhat of an eccentric renaissance man who not only dreamed up…

This week’s archive dive brings up a legendary tale of Duluth: How Wilhelm Boeing, father of Boeing Aerospace founder William Being, tried to not only sue Duluth over the ownership of the Duluth Ship Canal, but actually tried to block shipping traffic through the canal by tying a rope between its piers. It’s a truly…

In 1890, Duluth’s Board of Park Commissioners laid down the law, passing a resolution that read in part “that the President of the Board is hereby authorized to request of the proper city authorities the appointment of two policemen to patrol…public grounds…to the strict enforcement of the police regulations of the City therein.” It essentially…