The character of South End (South Superior), Wisconsin
Part of the South End (South Superior) neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
The South End feels like an ordinary American postwar neighborhood, which in the Twin Ports is unusual enough to be distinctive. Wide streets, mowed lawns, garages, boats and campers parked beside houses, basketball hoops. Nothing performs.
The blocks change as you move south. Nearer Belknap the housing is older and tighter, with cottages and bungalows on smaller lots that read more like the rest of the city. Further out the lots widen, the houses get newer and lower, and the last few blocks before the city line start to feel semi-rural, with big yards and tree lines.
Tower Avenue running through the middle is the neighborhood's spine and its most honest feature: a working commercial strip of taverns, service businesses, and small storefronts that has not been restored the way downtown has and does not pretend otherwise. It is where South End people actually go.
A Saturday here is domestic and outdoor. Yard work, a run to the strip, the Municipal Forest or the golf course, a drive south to Pattison or east to Amnicon if the weather is good. Evenings are quiet, and a night out means driving ten to twelve minutes north to the breweries or over the bridge to Duluth. Nobody living here is surprised by that.
Landmarks
The southern main street of what was, until 1889, the separately incorporated village of South Superior.
The 4,400-acre municipal forest on the neighborhood's western flank, one of the largest municipally owned forests in the United States.
The city's 36-hole public golf facility, named Duluth News Tribune Best Golf Course for six consecutive years.
South and southeast of the city line sit two separate governments that also carry the Superior name, a distinction that changes tax rates, services, and school assignment for parcels just beyond the city limits.
Character next door
Straight up Tower Avenue, the commercial core with the breweries and civic buildings.
Central Park (Superior)Northeast, the city's historic residential district with the period architecture and larger old houses.
Billings Park (Superior)Northwest along the river, similar quiet residential character with a signature riverfront park.
North End (Superior)North toward the harbor, older and cheaper housing with the brewery district and the port noise.
Allouez-Itasca (Superior)East along the bay toward the ore docks and Wisconsin Point.