Local lore in Downtown Superior, Wisconsin

• The street is named Tower Avenue for Charlemagne Tower, the financier behind the Duluth and Iron Range Railroad, whose money built the ore economy on both sides of the bay.
• The Empire Block has been on Tower Avenue since 1892 and sat in decline for decades before a roughly $6 million restoration put 15 apartments back over its storefronts. It is the largest historic commercial restoration the city has completed.
• The Cedar Lounge has been a tavern more or less continuously since 1912, when it was built for the Northern Brewing Company. Earth Rider brought it back as a taproom and music room rather than gutting it.
• Thirsty Pagan brews in a railroad building. The 1908 Soo Line Freight Depot served the railroad until 1989 and has been a brewpub since 2019.
• Downtown Superior is flat. That sounds trivial until you have tried to walk a Duluth errand in January, and it is the most underrated thing about living here.
• The buildings are bigger than the city needed. Superior platted and built for a metropolis in the 1890s, Duluth got the railroads, and the surplus 1890s streetwall that resulted is exactly why the district is interesting now.

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