Munger Terrace

Building’s history includes the early days of St. Scholastica Monastery

By John Lundy jlundy@duluthnews.com

Looming over busy Mesaba Avenue, Munger Terrace has a history that includes the early days of St. Scholastica Monastery.

According to a history written in 2017 for the monastery by Sister Judine Mayerle, the Benedictines settled in the early 1890s in Munger Terrace, renting three of the eight townhomes. They used two of the rooms in one townhome as a chapel and the rest as living quarters. By 1894, they had outgrown that space and moved to their own building at Third Street and Third Avenue East. Before long, they established a permanent home at their present site.

Munger Terrace was young when it briefly housed the Benedictines. According to local historian Tony Dierckins, publisher of Zenith City Press, it was built in 1892 for Roger Munger, whose family in 1868 had been the 12th to locate in what was then Duluth Township.

A small house that still exists next to Munger Terrace was the carriage house for Roger Munger’s Italianate mansion, built around 1871. The mansion later was bulldozed to make way for parking, Dierckins said.

Designed by Oliver Traphagen and Francis Fitzpatrick in what’s known as the Chateauesque style, Munger Terrace originally was called Piedmont Terrace, according to Dierckins. At that time, Mesaba Avenue was known as East Piedmont Avenue.

The building was converted from eight to 32 units in 1915, two years after Munger died. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977.

Originally built for $75,000, it was rehabbed in 1978-79 at a cost of $1 million, Dierckins said. u