Great Lakes Medallions

Great Lakes Medallions. Artist: Cynthia Harper, also, Medium: ceramic, concrete, bronze inlay, also, 1993. Located down the steps on bricked Buchanan Street Plaza, adjacent to the kiosk, Harper's five medallions show the Great Lakes and the links that connect them. Flags from the nautical alphabet spell out the lakes' names. Can you identify them? Cynthia Harper, a professional designer, lives in Oakland, California, and has exhibited her work extensively nationwide., Canal Park Development. Canal Park, with its central location, has had many patterns of life: as a summer encampment for Dakota and Ojibwa Indians, a white pioneer settlement, a flourishing manufacturing, jobbing and warehouse quarter, a red light district and favorite hangout for sailors, and now a thriving recreational, hospitality and specialty retail area., Throughout most of the 20th century railroad lines were a barrier between Canal Park and downtown. Spurs from these lines once ran the length of Canal Park, linking two modes of transportation and earning Duluth the slogan "Where Rail Meets Sail.", Most of the buildings in Canal Park, many of which you can see from here on the Buchanan Street Dock, remain from Duluth's late 1800s-early 1900s boom period when settlement was growing fast. Entrepreneurs and politicians then expected Duluth to rival Chicago in size and economic strength., Warehouses steadily expanded to hold merchandise brought from the east to serve and equip the expanding west, the logging and mining industries. These structures are typical of the era's commercial buildings, faced with brick and rough-hewn stone., The two-story red brick building in front of you was originally intended to be an eight-story duplicate of the DeWitt-Seitz building immediately to the west. Built as a mattress factory in 1909, the DeWitt-Seitz Company anticipated indefinite growth and started its second building only three months after completion of its first. Before this vision could be fulfilled the economy faltered, lake commerce slowed and one of Duluth's early boom periods ended., Gogebic Steam Boiler Works was the first occupant of what is now Grandma's Sports Garden. Built in 1907 with additions in 1911 and 1916, it made boilers sold nationwide., Many of the existing historic buildings in Canal Park were associated with the firm Marshall-Wells, housing subsidiaries or expanded operations of what was then the nation's largest wholesale hardware merchant and manufacturer of many products. These ties are revealed in vestiges of "Zenith" wall signs, proclaiming the company's principal brand. The main Marshall-Wells warehouse complex, between Lake Avenue South and Minnesota Slip, was built in 1900. Originally two seven-story brick and stone buildings, it is now mainly condominiums, a hotel, restaurants and stores. The building at 345 Canal Park Drive, built in 1898, was the Marshall-Wells stable. You can still see the protruding beam that held a pulley for hoisting hay into the building's loft. Number 349, now called St. Croix Station, was an oil house with lodging for the company's teamsters on the second floor. Between 345 and 349 there was once a lane known as "pleasure alley."