Old Postcard Wednesday—St. Louis Hotel and Torrey Building, Duluth, Minn.

Torrey Building
314 West Superior Street
Duluth MN United States

Status:    built
Construction Dates
  Finished    1892
Floor Count    10
Basement Floors    2
Elevator Count    3
       
Building Uses
 - office
Structural Types
 - highrise
Architectural Style                                                        Description
 - chicago school                                                        - Architect: Traphagen & Fitzpatrick
Materials
 - brick
                                                        - The building's frontage on Superior Street is 10 floors in height, and is                                                           12 floors from the back along Michigan Avenue.
[Source: Skyscraperpage.com]


In searching for information about the two buildings featured on this old postcard I came upon what I think is a fascinating resource, the source cited after the stats above. To see how cool this gets just click HERE to view a diagram of Duluth "skyscrapers" in a side-by-side line of comparison. (And that's just Duluth....it gets even better when you click around to view buildings in cities across the planet; check out this page with a United States Skyscraper Diagram, side-by-side comparison.)

You will notice in the above-mentioned diagram that the St. Louis Hotel is not drawn or mentioned. I was not having luck finding information about the old building until I came upon Zenith City Online - Celebrating Historic Duluth, Western Lake Superior, & Minnesota's Arrowhead - where, in Volume 1, Issue 2, the June 2012 edition, there is a piece about the St. Louis Hotel. As luck would have it, a book (highly praised) was written in 2011 titled Lost Duluth, and from that book I am posting (below) a portion of what Zenith City Online has posted. To continue reading, please click on the link to the June 2012 edition and from there you will find links taking you to a pdf copy of the material. Note that there were two St. Louis Hotel(s), the second one described below as the six-story building pictured in the old postcard:

St. Louis Hotel(s)
First:
Architect: George Wirth, Oliver Traphagen
Built: 1882, 1888 | Lost: 1893

Second:
Architect: Traphagen & Fitzpatrick
Built: 1894 | Lost: 1932

. . .Thomas Cullyford hired St. Paul’s George Wirth to design the St. Louis Hotel on the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue West and Superior Street. A typical Victorian design of four stories with red and white brick, the St. Louis—named for the river that creates the Duluth-Superior harbor—featured two square roof towers, columns, balconies, and decorative window hoods all capped with an elaborate cornice. The hotel (pictured at website and in book) resembled the Metropolitan block, another Wirth creation. . .

In 1888—as the grand Spalding Hotel was being built one block west—Cullyford hired Wirth’s former protégé, Oliver Traphagen, to design an eastern wing for the building that would nearly double the hotel’s size. The new wing, called the Brighton Hotel, repeated the architectural features of the original. . .

Tragedy struck the St. Louis on January 13, 1893, when two people perished in a fire that ultimately destroyed the original hotel building. Smoke and water damaged the Brighton, but not enough to keep it from reopening that March.

The following year Traphagen and his partner Francis Fitzpatrick designed a new St Louis Hotel, which was located east of and atop the Brighton lot. The new St. Louis stood six stories tall with a patterned brick cornice and carved stone ornamentation. Under the direction of Butchart and Michaud and their partner Louis Rouchleau, the new St. Louis regained its previous popularity with visitors. But by the late 1920s it was in decline, described in a 1948 WEBC radio program as “a rat’s nest and fire trap” at the end of its life. It was razed in 1932 to make room for the Medical Arts Building, an Art Deco masterpiece which still stands today. 

{Note: Talk about coming full circle.....the Medical Arts Building is in that 

Duluth Skyscrapers Diagram link at the beginning of this post!}

It's depressing to think about the history we have lost here in the U.S. Personally, I think Americans do a really poor job of preserving their past. At least Duluth replaced the old hotel with an Art Deco masterpiece and not a hideous big box building. I appreciated a website that quietly celebrates the Torrey Building, which still stands. Click here to view thumbnail images (that expand) of numerous examples of available offices, the front of the building, the skywalk, cafe, and more.  It's a sweet presentation, I thought.

I began this post with stats about the Torrey Building that mentioned the building has three elevators. Therefore, it is only fitting that I end it with a ride in two of them (the ending of the video shows why we can only ride in two). Hoping it gives you a "lift," I wish you a good Wednesday.


Explanation at youtube: These are the Lagerquist (maintained by ThyssenKrupp) traction elevators at the Torrey building in Duluth, Minnesota. They are borderline death trap elevators that make a lot of noise going up and down. The outer door frames on the bottom floor are about 6 inches shorter than the cab door frames, so you see part of the mechanics of the outer doors, which is rather unique. Overall, even though these are a little rickety, these are pretty nice elevators.



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Lost Duluth can be purchased here. I will be buying a copy, as it is the city where my Finnish grandparents settled after immigrating to the United States, and where they raised a daughter and a son, my father. They are all buried in Duluth.

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