Morgan Park, Duluth, Minnesota

Morgan Park is a neighborhood in Duluth, Minnesota, United States.

Arbor Street / 88th Avenue West serves as a main route in the community. Grand Avenue is nearby. The area was first developed for worker housing to support the US Steel plant known as the Duluth Works. It was developed along the Saint Louis River.

The Morgan Park neighborhood is also known as a planned community built by U.S. Steel to serve its Duluth Works steel plant in the early 1900s. Originally named "Model City" during its designing phase in 1913 and renamed in honor of U.S. Steel's founder J. P. Morgan in June 1914, the town of Morgan Park was built and run by the U.S. Steel Corporation until 1933, when it was all deeded to the City of Duluth.

The community thrived with recreational facilities, community clubs, the Lake View Store, billed as America's first indoor mall, a K-12 school, and its own police and fire department. Eventually, the steel plant declined and was shut down in phases, the last facilities closing in 1981. The historic nature of the community is still present.

At the time of its completion, Morgan Park stood as one of the crowning achievements of company town conception. Connected to the city of Duluth by an East and West road link, the town was somewhat isolated from the rest of the city, and until the 1930s, only employees of the U.S. Steel Corporation and its subsidiaries could live there. After the properties had been transferred to the city, residential housing was opened to any qualified candidate.

Minnesota Steel Company operated the steel plant. The town proprietor, known as the Morgan Park Company, was set up as its direct subsidiary. The Morgan Park Company served as a kind of private community government, responsible for trash pickup, lawn and house care, police and fire protection, health care (until the hospital closed in the 1920s), and snow removal. Residents of the town were expected to keep their homes up in a generally conservative suburban manner. If they failed to do so, the Morgan Park Company would do the work and deduct the costs from the employee's paycheck.

...
Wikipedia