Duluth Deep Dive #10: The Life, Work and Legacy of Edwin Samuel Radcliffe, Early Duluth Architect

A blog post on the history of Keller Row in St. Paul notes that not much is known about its architect, Edwin S. Radcliffe, who spent most of his career in Duluth. This Duluth Deep Dive counters that assertion by providing the most complete record of his life and works available online. It uses articles from the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub, reports by the Duluth Heritage Preservation Commission, and Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton’s book Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture to not only look at the buildings he created, but how his life and work intersected with important, surprising and trivial events in Duluth and Minnesota history. It includes stories of churches, schools, department stores, an Indigenous boarding school, a saloon and a brothel, along with an interactive map of all his known buildings. It also recounts the known events from Radcliffe’s life, including his participation in the Blueberry War of 1872, his patent on a device to make bathrooms less smelly, and the massive community card games held in his Park Point home.

According to a brief biographical sketch in the City of Duluth’s Historic Resources Inventory for the East End Residential Area, E.S. Radcliffe was born in Elmira, New York on June 2, 1851. His family moved to Indiana and then Warren, Minnesota[i], a city that Edwin maintained connections to throughout his life.[ii] At some point, the family moved to Minneapolis, where his father set up offices. His father, Abraham Radcliffe, was a prominent architect himself, with his more notable works including St. Patrick’s Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and several of the large residences on St. Paul’s Summit Avenue. Abraham Radcliffe’s firm also trained Minnesota architects that later gained prominence themselves, including close friends Cass Gilbert and Clarence Johnston. Cass Gilbert built the U.S. Supreme Court building, the Minnesota State Capital Building, and the base of the flagpole in front of the St. Louis County Courthouse building in Duluth. Clarence Johnston was one of the most prolific architects in Minnesota history, whose Duluth works include Glensheen Mansion and the Duluth Normal School.

His own son Edwin was another architect who trained in Abraham Radcliffe’s firm. Edwin graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1872 as part of his training to become an architect, but prior to continuing his education, he seems to have entered military service. He is sometimes referred to as a colonel[iii] and is listed as an attendee at a veteran’s reunion of the Blueberry War of 1872.[iv]

The Blueberry War was not a real war but it did involve real military service members. On July 20, 1872, the Crow Wing County sheriff had two brothers from the White Earth Nation in custody on suspicion of involvement in the mysterious disappearance of a white woman. Sometime after midnight, the sheriff released the brothers to five men who tortured them into a confession. A lynch mob, led by a man from Duluth, then had them hanged from a tree outside of the original Last Turn Saloon in Brainerd.

Coming ten years after the U.S.-Dakota War and with tensions still high between settlers and the Indigenous community, people in Brainerd feared the lynchings would lead to reprisals by an Ojibwe group seen setting up a camp along the Mississippi River just outside of town. Some people took the train to Duluth to get out of the area for a few days out of fear of impending violence.

The city requested help from the state and the governor deployed 75 soldiers from the St. Paul National Guard to confront the Ojibwe. When the military set up a meeting with the tribal leaders, they learned it was blueberry harvest season and members of the tribe had come to Brainerd to sell fresh blueberries. Most of the national guard, presumably including Edwin Radcliffe, returned to St. Paul the next day where the St. Paul press mocked the alarmist response of the governor by referring to the event as the Blueberry War.

In 1874, Edwin left to study at the Art Institute in New York City. After graduating, he returned to work in his father’s St. Paul office where he worked as a drafter from 1875 to 1886. In 1886, he took over the role of head architect from his father.

In 1883, while working at his father’s firm he received a patent for a special type of suction ventilator[v]. According to the patent description, the device could be used to “carry off foul gases … from water closets and similar places.” Throughout the patent description, which notes him as a resident of St. Paul, his last name is spelled without a final “e.” The patent is a legal document signed by witnesses, an attorney, and Edwin himself, whose clear signature does not contain an “e” at the end of his name. One could argue that an Edwin Samuel Radcliff was working in the same field in St. Paul at the same time as Edwin Samuel Radcliffe, but no other records exist under that name and the newspaper article announcing the patent does include an “e” at the end of his last name. In the hundreds of documents I reviewed related to his life and work, this is the only instance in which this spelling appears. I have no explanation for why.

In 1887, after taking over his father’s firm, he was elected secretary of the St. Paul chapter of the Knights of Pythias[vi] and remained a member of the organization for the rest of his life.[vii]

The group was founded in the lead up to the Civil War to ease growing societal tensions. In 1868 on the recommendation of Abraham Lincoln, it became the first fraternal organization to receive a congressional charter. Group membership was restricted to white men until the 1950s and a parallel organization established for people of color did not merge with the original group until the 1990s. The organization was not a political organization and primarily involved in volunteer and charity work, so it is difficult to infer Edwin’s political views from his membership, although later in life he was a member of the St. Louis County Republican Club[viii]. In 1895, he ran for Duluth alderman in the third ward, but little was written about his candidacy[ix]. He did have to take the following oath in order to join the Knights of Pythias:

I declare upon honor that I believe in a Supreme Being, that I am not a professional gambler, or unlawfully engaged in the wholesale or retail sale of intoxicating liquors or narcotics, and that I believe in the maintenance of the order and the upholding of constituted authority in the government in which I live. Moreover, I declare upon honor that I am not a Communist or Fascist; that I do not advocate nor am I a member of any organization that advocates the overthrow of the Government of the Country of which I am a Citizen, by force or violence or other unlawful means; and that I do not seek by force or violence to deny to other persons their rights under the laws of such country.

In 1889, Radcliffe entered into a partnership with the architect Frederick Hind, who had already grown to prominence despite only being 31 years old. Just a month into their partnership, Hind became sick and died two days later.[x] This may have prompted his move to Duluth that same year. He worked for the rest of his career in the Twin Ports.

In Duluth, he worked both alone and with partners. He practiced with Charles McMillen as McMillen & Radcliffe until 1893 and then with Charles Willoughby as Radcliffe & Willoughby from 1894 to 1900. He then worked from 1900 to 1904 with Vernon Hill as Radcliffe & Hill. For the rest of his career he worked independently, with the exception of a three-year period from 1907 to 1910 when he worked with noted Duluth architect Vernon Price as Radcliffe & Price.

At least two of those partnerships did not seem to have ended well. In 1893, a judge issued an order on behalf of Radcliffe to stop McMillen from spending any more of the money that came from the partnership[xi]. In 1914, Radcliffe and Price each sued each other for improper distribution of profits.[xii]

From at least 1909, the Radcliffes lived on Park Point. First at 3109 Lake Ave., where Mrs. Radcliffe often hosted the Park Point branch of the Presbyterian auxiliary. The Evening Herald of July 3, 1909 notes “The afternoon was spent in sewing and dainty refreshments were served on the veranda.” In 1912, he was put in charge of the first plan to light the Aerial Bridge over the Duluth Ship Canal using 721 incandescent lights running on current supplied for free by the Duluth-Edison Company.[xiii] By 1913, the Radcliffes had moved a few blocks south on Park Point to 3239 Minnesota Ave. The original house is no longer standing, so the two homes cannot be compared, but given the lot sizes, it is likely that the Radcliffes wanted something larger, as they hosted yearly winter card parties for the game Five Hundred (similar to Bridge) with people playing at up to 14 tables.[xiv]

In October 1915, the Radcliffes moved to Superior[xv], where Edwin joined the Kiwanis club and was a founding member of the Superior Knife and Fork Club, a group that met once a month for dinner and a guest speaker[xvi]. He continued to practice architecture in Superior, with the Duluth Herald noting his passing after a four-month illness on Sept. 19, 1925. A funeral service for him was held at the Duluth Masonic Temple and he is buried in Forest Hill Cemetery.[xvii]

The Collected Works of E.S. Radcliffe

Edwin Samuel Radcliffe’s architectural style was eclectic and client-oriented. He blended influences from French Romanesque, Neoclassical, and Gothic Revival traditions learned in his father’s practice with functional design principles. The majority of his work was done in the Twin Ports but he worked extensively on the Iron Range and accepted individual projects as far away as North Dakota. His work ranged from elegant residences to simple saloons. The map below shows all of his known buildings in Duluth, with a complete listing of his known works in the two subsequent tables. His buildings, both existing and demolished, with known addresses are all also shown in this interactive Google map. The text that follows takes a closer look at a number of these works, choosing not necessarily the ones of greatest architectural significance, but the ones whose construction and subsequent use intersect with particular moments of Minnesota history.

Businesses

Of all the different building types that Radcliffe worked on, his commercial buildings in Duluth are arguably the most impressive. Tony Dierckins and Maryanne C. Norton highlight four of the most significant examples in their book Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture: the Howe Building (1891), the Burrows Block (1891), the Duluth Press Building (1915), and the Panton & Watson Store (1892). Radcliffe was also responsible for many other smaller commercial structures in Duluth. For example, McMillen & Radcliffe’s Panton & Watson store at 128 W. Superior St., later known officially by its nickname at the time — Glass Block — eventually grew large enough to expand and take over the building at 122 W. Superior St. This was originally the Bell & Miller Building, a completely separate structure built two years before the Panton & Watson Store. On Feb. 18, 1890, The Duluth Evening Herald gave the following description:

The architecture of the building is a combination of the modern and French Romanesque, and curved brick and stone will be very fine. The store front will contain the largest plate-glass window in Duluth, being 120 by 146 inches; over this window will be a beautiful stained glass transom 40 by 146 inches. The windows of the upper stories will also be of the best French plate-glass, with stained glass transoms, and the second and third stories will have highly ornamental iron balconies. Without any doubt the new building will be one of the most attractive on Superior Street.

The building was part of a transformation of Superior Street, described by the Duluth Evening Herald on Nov. 14, 1889. The 100 West block of Superior Street was at that point home to small wooden structures, including a saloon and a livery stable where people could pay to keep their horses. These were being cleared out for construction of four new buildings, including the Bell & Miller Building. The Herald noted, “It is likely that nearly or the entire block may be of brick and stone by next fall.”

The Bell & Miller Building was built specifically to house a new location of the Ideal Restaurant, which took over the entire Superior Street floor, with the owners living above the restaurant[xviii]. From 1929 to 1952, it was home to Newberry’s, a discount department store[xix]. Glass Block eventually took over its neighbor and both buildings went down together in 1981 for the construction of the U.S. Bank Building.

Not all of Radcliffe’s commercial buildings were downtown. He is also responsible for the southernmost commercial building in Duluth. The structure at 132 Commonwealth Ave. on the edge of the Gary-New Duluth neighborhood is now home to Big B’s Boat Canvas, but it was built by Radcliffe in 1913 as the Pretner and Skala Saloon.[xx]

He also built at least one structure in the present-day Canal Park, one that illustrates the likelihood that there are many buildings throughout Duluth that he designed but that have not been attributed to him. The only record of his work on the Canal Park building in the newspaper archives comes from a lawsuit he filed for lack of payment against the person who commissioned the building: Marie Le Flohic, aka Madam Mary Hastings, aka Madame Gain[xxi]. Madame Gain, as she was known in Duluth, was one of the most notorious brothel owners and sex traffickers in U.S. history. She was also one of the wealthiest.[xxii] She was featured in the reformist tract If Christ Came to Chicago, which described how she trapped teenage girls and young women into sex work in Toronto, Denver, Portland, Oregon and San Francisco before fleeing to Chicago and again setting up her business. And after being driven out of Chicago, she spent the rest of her life in Duluth. A brief account of her activities, taken from an essay by Heidi Bakk-Hansen that was published on Zenith City Online, can be found in a timeline of Minnesota sex work.

The lawsuit states that Radcliffe provided plans to Madame Gain for a three-story brick building in the industrial — or red light — district of Duluth and that the building was completed in December 1906[xxiii]. The Sanborn insurance map from 1908 shows only two three-story brick buildings in the red-light district on St. Croix Avenue, now known as Canal Park South. One of them was the Palace Hotel, owned by Madame Gain, and the other was the Samps Hotel, the last standing brothel in the area that is now Canal Park. No records appear for the address after her death. The Palace Hotel was sold as part of the distribution of her assets, estimated at $5 million when adjusted for inflation[xxiv], and likely torn down as part of the redevelopment of the area some years later. The only available photographs of the Palace Hotel are blurry, obscured, or taken at some distance, but they give some indication of how the area looked at the time.

Churches

In addition to his brothel work, E.S. Radcliffe also designed churches. In 1893 he designed the First Methodist Church at 215 Third Ave. E., which served the congregation until the opening of the more modern Coppertop in 1966.[xxv]

While the building is credited to the architects Hill & Bray, he also worked on the St. James Catholic Church in West Duluth. Specifically, during his time working with Hill as Radcliffe & Hill, they created the foundation plans for the church before the actual building was designed[xxvi]. Hill then partnered with William Bray for the design of the church building. The degree to which Radcliffe may have contributed to Hill & Bray’s design isn’t known, but the answer may exist in a rather inaccessible location. On July 19, 1903, Bishop McGolrick laid the foundation stone of the new church and placed inside of it “the records and documents of the church.[xxvii]” Whether or not this includes a detailed architectural history is not clear. The church would need to be broken open to find out.

A church that Radcliffe did design on his own, and one of his few works to be on the National Register of Historic Places, is St. Mark’s African Methodist Episcopal Church[xxviii]. The lower level, which still clearly shows the location of the original entrance, dates back to 1900. Radcliffe worked on the expansion of the church, designing the upper level in the Gothic Revival style in 1913. The registration sheet for the National Register notes that “the simple rectangular massing has a parapeted gable roof with Tudor Revival detailing in the windows and bell tower.” The church was not added to the national register for its architectural significance, however, but rather for the role it has played “as the only building in the city built by Blacks for Black use,” which has served as a center of both religious and social activity throughout Duluth’s history. The church has been the site of Masonic meetings and meetings of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as hosting speakers who have given talks on civil rights and other issues of the day. In 1921, in the wake of the Duluth lynchings, NAACP founder W.E.B. DuBois spoke at the church.

The church was able to stay open during the Great Depression through community support. In 1934, a Duluth collector sold his rare photograph of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration and gave the proceeds to the church to save it from mortgage foreclosure. In 1937, the holder of that mortgage made a donation to the church in the amount of the remaining debt. The church continues to have services on Sundays at the same location and still provides support for the Black community in Duluth, including a long-standing college scholarship fund.

Schools

Radcliffe built several elementary schools in Duluth. Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture provides the background on two projects he worked on as part of McMillen & Radcliffe: the addition to Adams Elementary School that was torn down in 1968 and the construction of Jefferson Elementary in 1893.

In 1895, Radcliffe & Willoughby were hired to design a four-room brick expansion to Madison Elementary School on Rice’s Point[xxix]. No photos or drawings seem available of the original building or its expansion, as it did not last long. A fire that started in the basement on the evening of May 15, 1907 “developed into a most spectacular blaze, being witnessed by a crowd of between 2,000 and 3,000 persons.”[xxx] Fortunately, McMillen & Radcliffe had completed their expansion of Adams Elementary some years earlier in 1891, as the Madison students were moved there while the school board considered the options for rebuilding.[xxxi]

A school building committee recommended Madison Elementary be replaced with a two-story, eight-room brick building. That plan eventually went through, but over the objections of the director of the Duluth State Teachers College, Jed Washburn, who recommended a one-story building with the upper grades being moved to other schools, as the railyards were likely to limit population growth in the area. Foreshadowing future Duluth school developments, he also stated in the same meeting, “No more classical high schools should be built. We have too many of them now.”[xxxii]

The work on the new Madison Elementary School began alongside work on three other Duluth elementary Schools: The new schools of Nettleton and Ely and the repair of Franklin Elementary, which was damaged by fire in the fall of the same year.[xxxiii] Franklin School was torn down due to low student enrollment in 1979.[xxxiv]

Along with the newly built schools came innovations to Duluth education. In 1916, Nettleton had the first program in the city for people with hearing impairments. In 1919, Jefferson Elementary had the first program for people with sight impairments. And in 1926, Madison Elementary had the first program for people with physical disabilities. Madison Elementary introduced other innovative programs as well. In 1910, the female school principal, unnamed in the Herald article, approved a civics club made up entirely of students to take over a number of tasks related to student affairs, including student discipline. Initially, the plan only involved the upper grades but when the principal saw that the first graders were watching the older students and independently self-organizing, the plan was extended to the whole school. The students set out rules and plans at formal meetings that they led themselves according to Robert’s Rules of Order. As noted in the Herald:

At one of these meetings the subject of marking buildings and sidewalks was discussed and several members gave impromptu speeches of the most reformatory trend, proving that the club’s name is no misnomer, that it is wide-awake and is taking interest in municipal affairs… This principal’s experiment is being watched with interest for she is now securing encouraging results by this introduction of the republican form of government into the building and allowing the citizens thereof the right of suffrage.[xxxv]

Like Franklin, Madison Elementary also suffered from declining enrollments, and was sold to a private company in 1945.[xxxvi] While little is known about the design of Radcliffe & Willoughby’s addition to the original Madison School, its location is quite clear. The new school was built on the same spot and still stands in the middle of Rice’s Point, currently in use as the Duluth Seaway Port Authority building. As Rice’s Point does not contain a single residential structure, it is the only elementary school building in Duluth to outlast the home of every student in its district.

The only school in Duluth designed by Radcliffe still standing is Jefferson Elementary. It shows the level of detail he often included in his work. An article in the UMD Statesman by Nathan Kruse notes that Radcliffe built Jefferson in the Neoclassical style, using large, rough-cut blocks of local brownstone to emulate elements of ancient Greek and Roman architecture, including two pillared entrances to the building. It was one of the first buildings in Duluth to have indoor plumbing with “automatic flush.” When it opened in 1894, it was described as “one of the best ward schools in the country.”

My earliest memory, or at least the earliest that I can match with a date, is of the interior of a building by E.S. Radcliffe, which may explain my interest in him as an architect. My older sister went to kindergarten at Jefferson Elementary. I remember going with my mother to pick her up. I don’t know if the memory is of a single instance or a composite of all the times we walked down the hill to her classroom. I don’t recall anything dramatic happening, only the hallway itself. It was large and imposing and somewhat dark. It didn’t so much frighten me as weigh on me in some manner that stayed with me, like a movie about a haunted mansion where you no longer remember the plot but have a distinct recollection of the atmosphere. The elementary school closed in December 1982, when I was a month away from my fourth birthday. St. Luke’s then purchased the building, turning the lower floor into a childcare center and the upper floors into apartments.

One school that Radcliffe designed had a more significant role in Minnesota history than perhaps all of his others. The Duluth Evening Herald of Feb. 15, 1898, notes a trip by E.S. Radcliffe to Tower, Minnesota in his role as supervising architect for the Vermilion Indian School, a boarding school on an isolated section of the Bois Forte Reservation off of Lake Vermillion. From 1879 until at least the 1930s, at least 406 boarding schools were established in the United States in an attempt to reshape Indigenous society by separating children from their language, family and cultural practices. In Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year, a book on aspects of past and present Ojibwe life in Duluth, author Linde LeGarde Grover notes:

Boarding schools, and the policies that supported them, caused tremendous damage to American Indian families as well as disruption in the passing of tradition, knowledge, and spiritual beliefs and practices from generation to generation. So many effects of the historical trauma, which is also called by a more fitting name, intergenerational trauma, caused by the Indian boarding school experience are still with us today.

The boarding school that Radcliffe built on Sucker Point was in some ways reflective of boarding schools throughout the United States, and in some ways quite different. LeGarde Grover has written extensively about the Lake Vermilion school specifically, the place where her grandparents met. In Vermillion Lake Indian School: From Assimilation to Termination, she describes the history and lasting legacy of the school. While many boarding schools were often built far from Indigenous communities, successful lobbying from the surrounding community led to the Vermillion Lake school being built on a section of Ojibwe land belonging to the Bois Forte band.

While the building was built on Indigenous land, it was not particularly accessible. The school was located on Sucker Point, a peninsula jutting out into Lake Vermillion with no access by road until 1914.[xxxvii] LeGarde Grover notes that this was not an accident. The school administrators wanted to make it as difficult as possible for students to run away. This also meant the school was quite difficult to build. An article in the Herald notes that brick for the school would be taken across the ice during the winter and the necessary lumber would come over by boat after the spring thaw. When completed, LeGarde Grover notes that Radcliffe’s building was “picturesque, with its clean and attractive red-and-white lines contrasting with the lake and greenery in summer and blending with the snow and in winter.”

LeGarde Grover describes both how the location on Indigenous land and the presence of Ojibwe staff made the school somewhat less isolating than other boarding schools. Tribal members not only prepared meals, did the laundry, and worked on the attached farm, these same staff also taught cooking, sewing, and farming to the students. Other tribal members worked around the school. In an article titled, “Given Their Just Deserts,” the Tower Weekly News reported that two native men who lived near the school regularly sold venison and moose meat to local boarding houses until they were arrested for hunting out of the legally established season. When they couldn’t pay the modest fine, they were both jailed.[xxxviii] While the rules forbade students from speaking their native language with the staff and surrounding community, the practice was tolerated at the Vermillion school.

Even though the school was quite near the families of some of the students, they still were not allowed any visits with the family during the school year. LeGarde Grover notes instances in which the school’s blinds were closed when parents attempted to see their children through the windows. And most of the students came far from Lake Vermillion. The Duluth Herald notes multiple recruitment trips by the school superintendent to the Fond du Lac Reservation outside of Cloquet[xxxix] and LeGarde Grover notes that some students came from northwest Wisconsin and parts of Canada.

While punishment at the Lake Vermillion school wasn’t as harsh as at other boarding schools where students could be subject to long periods of solitary confinement, LeGarde Grover notes that students at Lake Vermillion were subjected to whippings and spankings. In 1900, Arthur Commons, a teacher at the school, removed 17-year-old Charles Eagle from class for not following instructions, “leading him toward the guard house, as a penalty for his disobedience.” When the student broke free and allegedly attacked Commons, he took out a billy club, “usually carried by instructors there” and “thinking to force obedience” struck him on the temple. Charles died “almost instantly.” Commons turned himself in but the grand jury chose not to indict him, finding that he had acted in self-defense.[xl]

While staff violence posed one danger to students, the larger danger came from the location and condition of Radcliffe’s building. LeGarde Grover notes that multiple superintendents requested a hospital for the isolated site, but one was never built. Sewage went directly into the lake. Students suffered and died from cerebral spinal meningitis, acute rheumatism, measles, influenza, blood poisoning, diphtheria, drowning and falls. The Duluth Evening Herald noted that Sam Smith, a popular baseball player at the school, died a month after returning to his home in Cass Lake after contracting tuberculosis.[xli]

While other elementary schools designed by Radcliffe were either destroyed suddenly due to fire or torn down after declining enrollments, his school on Sucker Point was lost due to a lack of maintenance funding. LeGarde Grover notes that school enrollment peaked at 120 students in 1910. The students slept two to a bed. From 1910 to 1919, the school’s superintendents made requests to the federal government for repairs and maintenance and never received adequate funding. The school stayed open from the work of the students themselves, who raised money by working the school farm and helped staff with maintenance of the building, labor that kept them from actual schoolwork. In the 1920s, a reform movement advocated for moving away from boarding schools for Indigenous children and the Vermillion school became a day school with a much smaller enrollment. But Radcliffe’s school building was in such a state of disrepair that it was torn down and the old laundry building was used as the main schoolhouse until the school finally shut down entirely in 1954. The final mention of the school in the Duluth Herald was on July 21, 1956, when a short article noted it as the site of the Baptist Daily Vacation Bible School. While none of the original school buildings remain, the site currently houses a community center with a gymnasium, playground, baseball field and pow-wow grounds.

In evaluating the overall impact of the boarding school system, LeGarde Grover writes, “In the end, the system failed twice: Indian people, determined to maintain family ties and cultural identity, did not assimilate, and the system created generations of poorly educated students who had learned to distrust it.” The school that Radcliffe built, isolated and poorly maintained with inadequate medical facilities, was certainly no exception. A doctor who visited the school in 1914, however, saw things somewhat differently, as described in the Tower Weekly News:

Dr. Schuemaker, an employee of the government … has found things at the school to be ideal. Certainly the site of this school is a fine one. It is the first exclamation of every visitor who crosses by boat to visit the place. There is no contamination of any kind. It stands alone and by itself. The drainage is excellent. Pure air and sunshine flood the place. The living conditions are perfect in every way and no better site exists anywhere … [Superintendent] Benson is doing everything in his power to put the school on a higher plane always. He is building for the future of the school and has in mind the things needed that our Red Brother may stand a chance of making his way in life under different and better conditions than he would were he left to the old, tribal ways of his ancestors.[xlii]

Downtown Virginia, Minnesota

While Radcliffe was based out of Duluth, it wasn’t unusual for him to work outside of the city. In 1905, he built a five-building fish hatchery complex in Glenwood, Minnesota, planned as “the best hatchery in the United States.”[xliii] He designed the original city halls for both Hibbing[xliv] and Chisholm.[xlv] During his final years, when he worked out of Superior, he constructed two houses next to Central Park[xlvi] and a business at 528 Tower Ave.,[xlvii] all still standing. But no other city outside of Duluth was more influenced by E.S. Radcliffe than downtown Virginia, Minnesota.

In March 1903, Radcliffe received the contract to construct the new Virginia fire hall, which is still the main headquarters of the Virginia Fire Department.[xlviii] In 1904, he received the contract for the Virginia City Hall.[xlix] It has since been replaced by a more modern building in the same location, but the plans for the 1905 structure note that Radcliffe, like other noted architects including Frank Lloyd Wright and Gunnar Birkerts, designed the furniture for the building.[l] It’s unknown if any of Radcliffe’s furniture has been preserved.

Many of the substantial commercial buildings that he built on Chestnut Street, the main street of Virginia, are still standing. Radcliffe designed the plans for a large department store on Chestnut Street that included Virginia’s Masonic Hall on its third floor.[li] The building was home to the Minnesota Dry Goods Company. A few years later, the department store expanded and remodeled on the same site. The Virginia Enterprise gave the following description of its 1913 re-opening:

The new store is one of the finest in the entire Northwest, not excepting the bigger cities and the vestibule front and display windows are of a size and design that are not excelled even in Chicago and the other large metropolitan cities. Larger cities may have more departments than has the Minnesota Dry Goods Company, but none excel it … Features of the new store are the display window, with the deep vestibule entrance, the wide spacious aisles, the excellent lighting both by day and by night, the great central stairway far back in the store, the big office on a mezzanine floor also far back, the carrier system for cash and packages, the rest room with tables, chairs, newspapers and magazines, the great cabinets for containing cloaks, suits and dresses in the ready to wear department. Incidentally there is the splendid view of the entire store from the first landing of the broad stairway with its wide, easy-tread steps.[lii]

Samuel Lippman, a Russian immigrant and the co-owner of the Minnesota Dry Goods Company, died unexpectedly of heart failure in 1918 at the age of 46. As Virginia did not have a Jewish cemetery, he was buried in Duluth with his father.[liii] His death put into motion a series of events that led to the contents of the store being sold and ultimately moved to Eveleth, where it existed for a short time before becoming a JCPenny store.[liv] While no photographs or drawings seem to exist of the original interior of the Minnesota Dry Goods Company, photos do exist of the business that most recently occupied the building, New China Buffet, and the interior ceiling appears to have been largely preserved.

In March 1907, the Sigel Block at 428 Chestnut St. opened. For some years, it housed the Bijou Theater, a popular vaudeville venue. The theater featured acrobats,[lv] a hypnotist,[lvi] and Professor Roberts Little Circus of 40 Trained Rats, the “only act of its kind in the world.”[lvii]

The Bijou also showed early films under the slogan, “The pictures at the Bijou do everything but talk.”[lviii] It had the only plate-glass mirror screen west of Chicago.[lix] When the theater showed a movie about an accident at sea, the newspaper noted that when it was shown in St. Paul, an audience member “became seasick watching the heaving and washing of the waves.”[lx] But before anyone becomes too nostalgic for a simpler time in cinema, the description of 1910’s Perils of the Plains rather bluntly reflects the importance of the ongoing struggle for better representation of marginalized groups in film:

Residences

People throughout Duluth are still living in homes designed by Edwin Radcliffe. The East End Historic Resources Inventory and the Duluth Preservation Alliance list five east-side homes designed by Radcliffe himself or with one of his partners. The records of the Duluth Herald show at least three others still standing. One of them, the former Bruner House at 1429 London Road, can easily be toured, as it is currently a business, Duluth’s Master Framer Gallery.

There are almost certainly structures Radcliffe built throughout Duluth that are still standing but the knowledge that he designed them has been lost. I was only able to learn of his role in designing a Duluth brothel because the madame did not pay his fees and the issue went to court. Other newspaper reports of his work provide descriptions that are not clear enough to locate. A notice from the Duluth Herald on Aug. 31, 1912 states:

Architect E.S. Radcliffe will let the contract, next week, for the construction of a six-room frame house for Fred Ames, to be erected on Superior Street near Forty-second Avenue East. It will cost about $3,500.

While some houses on that block match the general age and description, none are distinctive enough to be identified clearly as his work. Other well-known Duluth architects of his period, including his former partner Vernon J. Price, not only built monumental structures that are still admired today, but also made a living by selling easily modified home designs to be built by private contractors.

Not every home built in Duluth merited a report in the paper. A friend of mine recently purchased a home in Duluth and asked me to look into its history. Only after I found the original owner did I connect the home with E.S. Radcliffe. That initial research led to this post. And the very specific place of his home in Duluth architectural history will be the subject of the next Duluth Deep Dive. It is entirely possible that Radcliffe completed a number of smaller homes throughout Duluth beyond the ones attributed to him in my table.

The Buildings Not Built

Both the buildings still standing in the area and those lost over time form the record of E.S. Radcliffe’s work. But there is another category that reveals something about the environment in which he worked: structures Radcliffe designed but never built. In 1905, the Duluth Evening Herald announced that Radcliffe had plans for a new jail in Carlton.[lxi] Eight years later, the contract went to his former partner, Vernon Price.[lxii]

Radcliffe & Willoughby’s plans for a new Carnegie Library in Duluth were accepted by the public library board in 1900[lxiii] with bids from contractors being accepted a month later.[lxiv] The paper described the plans for the new library in detail.

Radcliffe & Willoughby proposed a two-story building built in the Renaissance style with a basement that included an assembly hall. The interior would have had marble wainscoting, iron electro-bronze staircases with marble noiseless treads, and an elevator. The library’s plan included an art gallery, reading rooms, and a children’s area. The stack room was designed not only to maximize light but to be easily expandable if the library grew in the future. The interior was arranged so that employees would have direct sight lines into all of the different rooms.[lxv]

When Andrew Carnegie nearly doubled his donation for the new library, the city council wanted a new plan. The library board argued they had the sole authority to issue contracts, but a judge ruled that they did not. Radcliffe & Willoughby were eventually awarded $750 for their efforts and the contract for the Carnegie Library building that still stands at 101 W. Second St. was awarded to A.F. Rudolph.[lxvi]

Rudolph’s Carnegie Library eventually needed to be replaced because of accessibility issues and an inability to expand a building that needed room for a growing collection. One of the main arguments for replacing the current Duluth library involves security concerns due to the lack of clear sightlines. Radcliffe & Willoughy’s plan seems to have addressed all of these concerns. If the city had accepted their design, Duluth may have saved a substantial amount of money over the subsequent 125 years.

Given that he built homes and businesses from Gary to Lakeside, nearly everyone in Duluth has likely come into contact with his work at some point during their time in the city. For me, his work is significant as the site of my earliest memory. But even for those without a personal connection, his body of work at a time when the population of the city and region were rapidly growing serves as a reminder of how the physical landscape we inherent reflects the cultural landscape that preceded us.

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This month’s Geoguessr Challenge looks at buildings by E.S. Radcliffe around the state. Each round lasts five minutes.

Geoguessr Challenge: The works of E.S. Radcliffe

A guide to playing Geoguessr can be found here.

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Notes

[i] Warren Sheaf, July 20, 1881

[ii] Duluth Evening Herald, June 30, 1909

[iii] Duluth Evening Herald, Feb. 15, 1898

[iv] St. Paul Globe, July 27,1902

[v] Willmar Republican-Gazette, March 1, 1883

[vi] St. Paul Daily Globe, June 26, 1887

[vii] Duluth Herald, Sept. 19, 1925

[viii] Duluth Herald, May 8, 1916

[ix] Duluth Evening Herald, Jan. 6, 1895

[x] St. Paul Daily Globe, Feb. 28, 1889

[xi] Duluth Evening Herald, May 6, 1893

[xii] Duluth Herald, July 14, 1914

[xiii] Duluth Herald, July 16, 1912

[xiv] Duluth Herald, Jan. 11, 1913; January 3, 1914; January 23, 1915

[xv] Duluth Herald, Oct. 2, 1915

[xvi] Duluth Herald, July 23, 1923

[xvii] Duluth Herald, Sept. 21, 1925

[xviii] Duluth Evening Herald, Feb. 18, 1890

[xix] Duluth Herald, April 8, 1929; Dec. 26, 1952

[xx] Duluth Herald, Sept. 20, 1913

[xxi] Duluth Evening Herald, Oct. 31, 1907

[xxii] Duluth Herald, Dec. 25, 1914

[xxiii] Duluth Evening Herald, Oct. 31, 1907; July 11, 1907

[xxiv] Duluth Herald, March 3, 1917

[xxv] Dierckins, T., & Norton, M. C. (2022). Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870-1940 (First Edition). Zenith City Press.

[xxvi] Duluth Evening Herald, March 18, 1902

[xxvii] Duluth Evening Herald, July 7, 1903

[xxviii] Duluth Herald, March 15, 1913

[xxix] Duluth Evening Herald, June 25, 1895; July 12, 1895

[xxx] Duluth Evening Herald, May 16, 1907

[xxxi] Duluth Evening Herald, Oct. 1, 1907

[xxxii] Duluth Evening Herald, May 22, 1907

[xxxiii] Duluth Evening Herald, Dec. 5, 1907

[xxxiv] Dierckins, T., & Norton, M. C. (2022). Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture 1870-1940 (First Edition). Zenith City Press.

[xxxv] Duluth Evening Herald, May 21, 1910

[xxxvi] Duluth Herald, Feb. 20, 1945

[xxxvii] Tower Weekly News, Oct. 23, 1914

[xxxviii] Tower Weekly News, June 5, 1903

[xxxix] Duluth Evening Herald, Aug. 16, 1908, Sept. 18, 1909

[xl] Tower Weekly News, Oct. 15, 1900

[xli] Duluth Evening Hearld, Oct. 8, 1909

[xlii] Tower Weekly News, Oct. 9, 1914

[xliii] St. Paul Globe, Feb. 27, 1904; March 30, 1904

[xliv] Duluth Evening Herald, Aug. 18, 1909

[xlv] The Virginia Enterprise, Jan. 25, 1907

[xlvi] Duluth Evening Herald, July 3, 1890

[xlvii] Duluth Evening Herald, Jan. 1, 1915

[xlviii] Duluth Evening Herald, March 3, 1903

[xlix] The Virginia Enterprise, June 2, 1905

[l] The Virginia Enterprise, June 2, 1905

[li] Eveleth Mining News, Sept. 1, 1905

[lii] The Virginia Enterprise, March 7, 1913

[liii] Duluth Herald, Jan. 25, 1918

[liv] Eveleth News, Dec. 25, 1919; April 25, 1925; April 15, 1926

[lv] Virginia Enterprise, Jan. 8, 1909

[lvi] Virginia Enterprise, May 26, 1911

[lvii] Virginia Enterprise, Jan. 1, 1909

[lviii] The Virginia Enterprise, Aug. 23, 1907

[lix] The Virginia Enterprise, Dec. 13, 1913

[lx] The Virginia Enterprise, Jan. 31, 1913

[lxi] Duluth Evening Herald, Nov. 18, 1905

[lxii] Duluth Herald, Oct. 4, 1913

[lxiii] Duluth Evening Herald, March 16, 1900

[lxiv] Duluth Evening April 25, 1900

[lxv] Duluth Evening Herald, March 16, 1900

[lxvi] Duluth Evening Herald, Aug. 31, 1901; Jan. 14, 1902