April 19, 1902: Duluth Public Library opens

On this day in Duluth in 1902, the new Duluth Public Library formally opened at 101 West Second Street. While there were literary and library societies in Duluth in the 1870s and 1880s, the Duluth Public Library was officially formed in 1889 and took up residence on the second floor of the Temple Opera Block. As the library grew, it took over more space in the building, and by the turn of the century had outgrown the facility’s remaining space. The city used a $25,000 donation from Andrew Carnegie to offset the $65,000 cost of building the new library, a Neo-Classical brick and sandstone structure designed by Duluth’s Adolph F. Rudolph. The building includes a central dome and once held two Tiffany windows made to honor the area’s history, the 1893 Minnehaha Window (first made to represent Duluth and St. Louis County at the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago) and the Greysolon Window, commissioned for the new library in 1904. When the Minnehaha Window was removed from its place in the Temple Opera Block on orders from the city’s head librarian, E. P. Alexander—who then owned the Temple Opera Block—took the window home. After public pressure, Alexander returned the window to the library as his “gift to the city.” When a new library was built in 1980, the 1902 library building was converted to office space and is still in use today. The windows are now on display at the historic Union Depot, today’s St. Louis County Arts & Heritage Center. Read a history of the Duluth Public Library here.

A postcard of the Duluth Public Library made between 1902 and 1915. (Image: Zenith City Press)