Historic Duluth Woman’s Club building will become B&B

A Superior Street mansion that long served as a meeting place for the Duluth Woman’s Club has been sold to a Washington couple with plans to establish a bed and breakfast in the Turn-of-the-Century property.

The Hartman House, 2400 E. Superior St., was purchased by Lynden, Washington real estate agent David Halvorsen and his wife Dr. Trisha Halvorsen in May. The couple paid $675,000 for the five-bedroom brick Tudor home constructed by Duluth Edison Electric founder Alexander W. Hartman and his wife Katherine in 1910. It had been owned and maintained by the Duluth Woman’s Club since 1936.

The Duluth Planning Commission approved a special use permit July 8 to restore and reopen the home for bed and breakfast style lodging. An innkeeper will live on site and manage the property.

The new place will be called the Hartman House Bed and Breakfast. Hartman is widely recognized for bringing electrical power to Duluth. His Duluth Edison Power Company eventually became Minnesota Power and Light Company which is now known as Minnesota Power.

David Halvorsen said while his family lives in Washington near the Puget Sound, both he and his wife have extended family in the Twin Ports. David and Trisha Halvorsen attended the University of Minnesota Duluth and were married in Duluth before moving out west. The couple travels back to Minnesota frequently for the holidays.

“This is a home away from home for us,” he said. “So it was on our minds, on our radar, to own real estate in Duluth — it was something that was just a pretty good connection to the city for us.”

Halvorsen said he has purchased and renovated homes for resale but is new to the bed and breakfast business.

“This particular property was very suited for this bed and breakfast vision,” he said. “It has the size, it has the room for the various amenities we’d like to bring into it. It has the history. It’s got the allure. It has name recognition. People are very familiar with the Duluth Woman’s Club … It has a lot going for it.”

Halvorsen said the building has been well cared for over the years so no major improvements are needed to the structure. Rooms will be renovated to accommodate guests, a sauna will be added and a historic fireplace will be brought back to life. Parking details are still being worked out, he said, but plans before the city showed new access and guest parking off Branch Street in the backyard below the house.

In a memo to the planning commission, city of Duluth staff wrote that a bed and breakfast will have no negative affect on the neighborhood and will preserve another historic mansion as a tourist attraction. “Projects of this size and age are very difficult to maintain as residences,” the memo states. “With limited occupancy no greater than the original family would have programmed, it will provide an income stream to be applied to property maintenance and appearance, thus a fundamentally appropriate historic home can occupy a sustainable position in today’s economy.”

Duluth Woman’s Club officials said economics played a significant role in the decision to sell its longtime home. A slow and lengthy decline in membership and a tax status that restricted its building uses limited funds for building upkeep.

The Duluth Woman’s Club was established in 1923. The club — open to all area women — organizes regular speaker presentations, hosts a book club, schedules game nights and organizes community activities like its annual home and garden tour.

“It’s really unfortunate but like so many other organizations, we’re losing membership,” said Duluth Woman’s Club past president Ellie Dryer. “In its heyday — way back when — they had as many as 400 members. Now we’re down to, let’s just say 120, 110 members now. Those old beautiful mansions require an awful lot of upkeep and we just didn’t have the membership to sustain it. We tried.”

Dryer said a large club member donation and the sale of an adjacent property a few years ago were not enough to help keep up with property management costs.

“It’s heartbreaking for me,” said Dryer, who contributed both time and money to maintain the clubhouse over the years. “So a lot of me belonged to that building. It’s very sad for me, but hopefully somebody will be able to bring it back to what it was.”

Dryer called the bed and breakfast concept a perfect fit for the building. Designed by architect Frederick Perkins, the house features leaded glass windows, mahogany trim, wood-ribbed ceilings, historic light fixtures and a back porch with stunning Lake Superior views. The house was designated a Duluth Heritage Preservation landmark in 2017.

The Duluth Woman’s Club will carry on in a new location. It will rent space at the Kitchi Gammi Club, another grand, historic building, at 831 E. Superior St.