The history of East Hillside, Duluth, Minnesota
Part of the East Hillside neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
East Hillside was built for the same reason and in the same decades as Central Hillside next door. Duluth's commercial core took the flat shelf by the water, and housing went up the hill because the hill was what was left. The stock dates mostly from about 1885 to 1940 and it went up close together and quickly.
What distinguishes this half is that it was always somewhat more residential. Central Hillside sat directly above downtown and absorbed the institutions that wanted to be near it, the churches and later the hospitals and social services. East Hillside sat above the lakefront and the Fitger's brewery rather than above the commercial core, and its development ran to houses, a neighborhood school and neighborhood churches.
The lakefront edge shaped it too. Leif Erikson Park and its formal rose garden went in on the shoreline below, London Road became the eastern approach to the city, and the Fitger's brewery, operating on East Superior Street from 1881 until 1972 and listed on the National Register in 1984, anchored the neighborhood's lower western corner with jobs.
Chester Creek did the rest. The gorge on the eastern boundary was kept public rather than built over, in the same wave of city park-making that produced Congdon Park on the other side of the hill, and the ground at the top of it carried Duluth's ski jumps. That decision is why the eastern blocks still command a premium inside the neighborhood: they back onto sixty acres of woods and falling water.
The twentieth century brought the same pattern as every inner-ring neighborhood in America. Households that could buy new bought above the hill or out east, ownership fell, and a good deal of the single-family stock was cut into upper and lower units, helped along here by two college campuses within a couple of miles. The institutional response arrived alongside: CHUM was founded in 1973 when ten Hillside churches pooled resources, and LISC Duluth has designated the Hillside a focus area for about twenty years, supporting the Hillside Revitalization Plan.
The land at the head of the lake was Ojibwe country, ceded under treaty in the mid-nineteenth century before the city was platted.
History next door
West across Sixth or Seventh Avenue East, the other half of the Hillside: denser, cheaper, closer to downtown and the hospitals, and noisier.
Chester ParkEast across Chester Creek, the university-side hillside neighborhood with a much higher owner-occupancy share and higher prices.
East End / EndionBelow and east along the lake, historic housing with lake views at meaningfully higher prices.
Downtown DuluthAbout a mile downhill southwest, with the transit hub, the library, the theaters and most of the region's restaurants.
Congdon ParkEast along the hill, the city's benchmark historic neighborhood, at roughly three times the price.