Local lore in Downtown Duluth, Minnesota

• The skywalk is a real neighborhood, not a curiosity. Roughly three miles of it across about seventeen blocks, and long-time downtown workers navigate the district by which building connects to which rather than by street.
• Old Central's clock faces are ten feet across. E. Howard and Company of Boston made them and they went up in 1893; five Buckeye Bell Foundry bells were added two years later to chime the Westminster Quarters. The building is now 122 apartments.
• The Depot was a train station before it was a museum, and it still is one on the days the North Shore Scenic Railroad runs out of it.
• Sacred Heart at 201 West 4th Street was Duluth's Catholic cathedral before the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary was completed in 1957. It is now a concert hall with its original pipe organ, and it is one of the best acoustic rooms in the region.
• Fitger's brewed beer at 600 East Superior Street from 1881 until September 30, 1972. The complex runs about 720 feet along the shoreline and now holds a hotel, shops, restaurants and a brewpub that brews on the same site.
• Downtown's office vacancy rate is 22.7 percent and the city's answer so far has been $500 grants. Both numbers are real, and locals argue about which one matters more.
• Every bus in the system comes here. The Duluth Transportation Center is the hub, which means downtown is the only address in the region where "I will take the bus" is a plan rather than a hope.

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