The Hotel Superior reigned supreme as the place to stay, until a new development until the Androy Hotel came along.

In this month's episode of Archive Dive, Telegram reporter Maria Lockwood is joined by local historian and retired librarian Teddie Meronek as they look back on what gave the Hotel Superior it's edge, the community fundraising campaign that built the Androy Hotel and the notable people connected to both.

"Everybody started building at once," said Meronek. "You not only have the Hotel Superior in downtown, you have the Euclid in East End, which was a big hotel. But then, you had the Broadway Hotel, which most people if they remember the building at all, remembers it as the Broadway Flats, because it eventually turned into apartments and that was on Hammond Avenue and Broadway, the intersection there. So, there were a lot of big hotels being built because there were a lot of people coming into Superior at that time, setting up businesses and starting businesses and coming into to entertain at the Grand Opera House."

What made the Hotel Superior the place to stay in Superior?

"It was kind of fancy. If you see pictures of it's dinning room and that. It was a very Victorian-looking hotel that we would consider, y'know, rather nice. Anybody who was anybody who came through Superior and needed a hotel room probably stayed there, because it was downtown," Meronek said.

A few decades after the Hotel Superior, the Androy Hotel, dubbed "the Million Dollar Hotel," opened.

“They started talking about the Androy Hotel in 1922, and so, by that time, the Hotel Superior was over 30 years old and it was from a different era," said Meronek. "These were the roaring 1920s and there were a group of businessmen that thought that they needed a hotel in downtown Superior. The Hotel Superior wasn’t in downtown. It was at the fringes of downtown Superior, they were talking about the business district downtown.” It was people that were in the association of commerce and the commercial club, those men who got together and said, ’We need something for the businessman. Downtown Superior needs to make a statement.’”

Also in this episode, Maria and Teddie discuss how the Hotel Superior helped the Grand Opera House; an urban legend involving actors going to and from the hotel and the opera house; some of its early amenities; a connection to the Titanic; the efforts to raise money to build the Androy Hotel; how Superior teased Duluth about getting a downtown hotel and how Duluth responded; some interesting fundraising events at the Androy Hotel; how both hotels served another housing need in the 1960s; and more.

New episodes of Archive Dive are published monthly. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are edited and produced by Duluth News Tribune digital producers Wyatt Buckner and Dan Williamson. If you have an idea for a topic you’d like to see covered, email Maria Lockwood at [email protected].