Morgan Park United Protestant Church

830 88th Ave. W.

According to this building’s application for placement on the National Register of Historic Places, “The United Protestant Church is a Gothic Revival-style, two-story building, designed with a simple basilica plan.” Gothic Revival buildings were supposed to harken to a pre-industrial past, which is rather ironic considering the church’s location in Morgan Park, U. S. Steel’s model city for employees of its Duluth Works.

By 1919, a steel workers’ strike elsewhere plus a national recession resulted in many layoffs. To help find jobs for its local workers, U. S. Steel deployed them to various projects in Morgan Park, including this church. The original plans from the prominent Duluth architects Frederick German (1863-1937) and Leif Jenssen (1879-1923) were deemed too expensive; their revised version featured an English Gothic style church with “a high nave interior, a beamed ceiling, and a single side aisle” as well as a central bell tower. Unlike other Gothic Revival churches, this unique church is built of unfaced concrete block, not brick or stone.