On Friday, the Duluth Preservation Alliance (DPA) announced their 2024 Ten Endangered Places list with a focus on locations that reflect the Twin Port’s unique industrious heritage.

“The National Trust for Historic Preservation does a national list and it isn’t totally unheard of for local preservation groups to do these lists so we’re kind of copying from that tradition and just selecting 10 places that can really highlight that we think that are risks that we really want to share the histories this year,” said DPA President Blake Romanesco.

Each places falls under one of three categories. The first, “Impending Demolition”, means there are active plans to demolish the place. “Future Uncertain” is described by DPA as places with “any combination of deferred maintenance, unscrupulous ownership, long-term non-use, or facing other threats”. Lastly, the “Under Recognized” category is for places that may be vulnerable to future threats as they have “significant overlooked history”.

The ten places named (from west to east) with category included are as follows:

• Proctor South Roundhouse – Future Uncertain
• DM & IR Ore Dock – Future Uncertain
• Nelson Block Buildings – Future Uncertain
• Park Point – Future Uncertain
• Duluth Commercial Historic District – Future Uncertain
• 100 Block E. 1st Street – Impending Demolition
• Nettleton Elementary School – Future Uncertain
• First Presbyterian Church – Under Recognized
• Central Hillside Commercial District – Future Uncertain
• Woodland Booster Pump Station – Impending Demolition

With a focus on Park Point, a press conference was held Friday morning at 1221 Minnesota Avenue. This is one of the approximately 14 lots on Park Point that recently became empty.

“In the past year with Kathy Cargill’s demolition of at least 14 homes on the point, we really wanted to highlight this place which is such an important place here in Duluth,” said Romanesco. “Park Point has a lot of history and even like little homes like that were lost here do have history and that really hasn’t been explored too a lot. Some of the homes that were demolished were you know old summer homes of people who again came to the lake for the natural access here. We also have the old light housekeeper’s houses which are still standing but those aren’t protected. Kathy could tear those down in any day if she wanted to probably. This place has always kind of been a part of our city’s history.”

Pat Sterner is a Park Point resident and Chair of Minnesota Point 50.

A lot of our focus is how do we manage that change to be resilient and that includes conserving historic properties and historic homes on Park Point as we manage that change because they are very much a part of the of the fabric of this community,” said Sterner. “We really want to make sure that the public who comes down here everybody’s welcome obviously. We’re a very welcoming community but we really focus on educating the public as well about how to take care of Park Point so that it’s here for generations to come.”

Minnesota Point 50 is geared towards the long-term resiliency of Minnesota point. This includes cultural, historical, economic, ecological, and environmental aspects.

“I mean climate change is driving people to come to Minnesota Point and it’s driving the change on Minnesota Point. We recognize that you know there’s no way to stop that- although we can certainly hopefully slow climate change,” said Sterner. “What we do recognize is that we do have folks coming to Park Point buying properties, creating rentals, it’s changing some of the face of the community and yet as a community we’re welcoming to everyone and the education piece around the environment the you know fragility of the dunes and the sand beach. Pick up your stuff you know don’t leave trash on the beach all of those messages help us to preserve what is a very unique community.”

The goal of publishing this list of “Ten Endangered Places” is to draw attention to some of these issues. Duluth Preservation Alliance also made an interactive story map that shows an overview of the history of the places listed.

“Eventually ideally these places be saved but some of these places aren’t going to be saved and we just want to also just share their stories as well,” said Romanesco. “It’s just a community effort of us volunteers from all across the city deciding like what do we want to highlight and what’s important to us.”