The character of Central Park (Superior), Wisconsin
Part of the Central Park (Superior) neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
Central Park feels older and calmer than the rest of Superior, and it is the one neighborhood here that visitors from Duluth immediately recognize as familiar. Wide streets, mature boulevard trees, deep front setbacks, porches, and a legible grid.
The blocks vary more than a first drive suggests. East Second, Fifth, and Seventh carry the large-lot houses and the best of the period detail, with turrets, wraparound porches, and stone foundations. Move a few blocks and the scale drops to four-squares and bungalows, then to Cape Cods and ranches on the newest streets. The mix keeps the neighborhood from feeling like a museum district, and it means the entry price is a lot lower than the flagship streets suggest.
It is quiet in a way that is easy to underrate until you have spent a week in a Superior neighborhood that is not. No dock operations, no yard noise, limited through traffic. On a summer evening you hear the foghorn and not much else.
A Saturday here is domestic and short-range: yard work in the morning, a walk or a ride on the flat streets, the Osaugie Trail or Barker's Island in the afternoon, and downtown or the north-end breweries in the evening. Nightlife inside the neighborhood is nil, and nobody living here expects otherwise.
Landmarks
The 42-room, 15,000 square foot Queen Anne mansion with 12 fireplaces and a four-story turret, built 1889 to 1891 for lumber and mining baron and Superior mayor Martin Pattison. Later an orphanage, now a museum overlooking the harbor.
The large-lot streets platted in the 1862 Superior City townsite that drew the city's substantial residences through the 1890s and early 1900s, and still the best concentration of period architecture in Superior.
Italianate limestone cathedral at 1111 Belknap Street, dedicated Christmas 1927.
The four-year campus on Belknap Street at the neighborhood's southern edge.
Character next door
A mile west, the Tower Avenue commercial core with the breweries, the Anchor Bar, and the civic buildings.
North End (Superior)Northwest toward the port, older working-class stock and the brewery district at a lower price.
Allouez-Itasca (Superior)East along the bay toward the ore docks and Wisconsin Point.
South End (South Superior)South along Tower Avenue, more postwar housing and a lower entry price.
Billings Park (Superior)The west end of the city on the St. Louis River, the other quiet residential neighborhood with a signature park.