Local lore in Central Hillside, Duluth, Minnesota

• The building everyone pictures is not a church any more. Sacred Heart at 201 West 4th Street was Duluth's Catholic cathedral before the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary was finished in 1957. It is now a concert hall with its original pipe organ, and one of the best acoustic rooms in the region.
• Some of the avenues are stairs. The grade beat the grid on several numbered avenues, and the city built public stairways instead of streets. Locals give directions by which stairway you take.
• The bus route is named after the neighborhood. Route 114 runs Central Hillside to Observation Hill, which is the sort of thing that only happens where a neighborhood is genuinely a place rather than a line on a map.
• CHUM started with ten churches on this hillside in 1973, pooling what they had. It now serves more than 8,000 people a year across the city.
• The co-op on 4th Street is the reason this neighborhood works. A full grocery you can walk to on the level, at this price point, is close to unique in Duluth.
• The harbor view is free here. Houses with an unobstructed sightline to the lift bridge sell for a fraction of what that view costs four miles east, and locals have known it for a long time.
• Old Central's clock tower is the neighborhood's landmark from below. Its ten-foot faces have been keeping time on the hillside since 1893, and since 2024 there have been 122 apartments behind them.

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