05/26/2026
During this week in Duluth in 1925, the Hotel Duluth kicked off a two-day celebration of the hotel’s grand opening. The building’s organizers scheduled a lavish celebration for May 22, inviting 400 couples that included delegations from the Iron Range, Twin Cities, Milwaukee, and Chicago. The Duluth Symphony Orchestra played in the lobby throughout the event, which included a lavish dinner. After dinner the Lyceum Ballroom Orchestra, directed by Frank Mainella, and the Ben Miller Orchestra provided dance music in the hotel’s third-floor ballroom—the “finest in the midwest,” according to the Duluth Herald. The Hotel Duluth first opened for guests six days later, on May 8, 1925. George H. Crosby, namesake of Crosby, Minnesota, and considered the “father of the Hotel Duluth,” was the first to sign the register, followed by owner and builder Walter Schroeder and the hotel’s architect, H. W. Tullgren, next. That evening dinner parties were held in both the Hotel’s English and Moorish rooms, with Schroeder exclaiming that, “This is the most beautiful hotel lobby in the country and Duluthians should be proud of this institution. The hotel is a great civic project and should have the support of every man and woman in the city. The people have been clamoring for a new hotel for many years and now they have an institution that compares with the best in the country.” The Duluth Herald wrote that the hotel had the “typical atmosphere of the east.” The paper went on to describe the building as “a bit of New York transplanted to the Northwest…. From the lobby to the 14th floor Hotel Duluth is essentially metropolitan.” It was compared to other grand hotels in the U.S., including New York’s Commodore and Roosevelt and Chicago’s Blackstone. Famous guests included Pearl Bailey, Liberace, Henry Fonda, Charles Boyer, and Norway’s Crown Prince Olaf and his family. President John F. Kennedy stayed in the hotel two months prior to his death. Since the early 1980s the building has served as a senior living facility known as Greysolon Plaza. Adapted from “Duluth’s Grand Old Architecture” https://zenithcity.com/duluths-grand-old-architecture/