The character of Cody, Duluth, Minnesota
Part of the Cody neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
Cody feels like a neighborhood that does not need to be visited to be understood. Streets of modest houses on a moderate slope, garages, mature trees, and the ravine running through with a band of woods around it.
The pace is domestic and slow. There is no through traffic to speak of, because nothing is on the other side of Cody except the hill, and no commercial destination to draw anyone in. People who are here live here.
The ravine is the neighborhood's one dramatic feature and it changes the feel of the streets that back onto it. Those blocks get trees, a creek sound and a green edge; the blocks on the open grid get an ordinary residential street.
A Saturday is errands downhill in Spirit Valley, something outdoors, and not much else locally. In winter that means Spirit Mountain eight minutes away, which is close enough that skiing is a weeknight activity rather than an expedition. In summer it means the Traverse, the zoo with children, or the Munger Trail down at Norton Park.
What Cody lacks is any gathering place of its own. There is no cafe, no corner store, no community building beyond the church. Social life is neighbors, the school run and the strip below.
Landmarks
The creek and its wooded ravine cut through the neighborhood, and are the reason the street pattern breaks where it does.
The neighborhood's own congregation at 6101 Cody Street, and one of the few institutional buildings inside Cody.
Character next door
Immediately downhill, the main street where almost every errand from Cody actually happens.
DenfeldEast, more housing stock, the high school, and the nearest published median.
FairmountSouth, with the Lake Superior Zoo and the Kingsbury Creek corridor.
Bayview HeightsUp the hill west, larger wooded lots, Proctor schools and a harder winter.
IrvingSoutheast toward the bay, a similar era of housing with a park and playfield.