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The Port's Past The Belgian Club dates to an Allouez of long ago
Its Most travelers on U.S. Highway 53 pass Allouez without any idea that this was once an important destination.. The Itasca Elevator, once the world's largest grain elevator in terms of capacity, was torn down decades ago. The railroad tracks have been replaced by snowmobile trails. Only one of the world's largest ore docks remains, its lacy steel structure stretching out over the harbor as a monument to the town's long-gone past. On Highway 53, one lone clue hints of the town's bustling and thriving heritage. The Belgian Club. Virginia Kern, who was born here 75 years ago, knows all about the history and the golden days of Allouez, which was named for Father Claude Allouez, an 18th-century missionary who ministered to the Ojibwe Indians on Wisconsin Point. |
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| Virginia's parents were Achille La
Perre and Julia Van Den Branden La Perre, Belgian immigrants. Like many other Belgians,
her father landed in Buffalo, New York, and was sent by representatives of coal and iron
companies to work at the coal yards and ore docks of Wisconsin. "Many Belgian men came without their families and lived in boarding houses here in town," she says. Her mother's cousin, Mrs. Paul Hendricks, owned a hotel, saloon and boarding house on Itasca Street, two blocks from the bay. There Virginia's parents met. Perhaps it was there that homesick Belgians gathered to discuss the idea of acquiring and sharing books and newspapers printed in their native language. "That was the start of the Belgian Club, in 1912," she says. "Those Belgian workers joined together with another club that raced pigeons and formed the Belgian Club, which offered social as well as cultural activities."
According to current club manager Jim Prianoski, the Belgian Club now consists of 150 men who must have Belgian blood in order to join. Its oldest member is 90, its youngest, 18. Once the club was open every day. Now it opens periodically for wedding receptions, reunions, anniversaries and the annual celebration of Smear Day. The Smear Day tradition begins with an Easter Monday mass at St. Anthony's Catholic Church. From there, members drive (they used to march) to the club where they play games, pay their annual dues, attend a big luncheon and then spend the afternoon playing Smear card games, Virginia says. During the evening the women and children join them for a dinner, a visit from the Easter Bunny and a big dance. An accordionist and guitarist launch the festivities with children's dances. After The Bunny Hop, The Hokey Pokey and other favorites, the adults swing into a long succession of polkas. On ordinary days, two antique stores tempt tourists to browse in Allouez. Dogerty Antiques is located in an old mercantile store that still has molds for mittens and shoes on its second floor. Allouez Antiques recently moved into a large, nondescript, old-fashioned building covered in asphalt shingles on the corner of East Second Street and Highway 53. All that proprietor Beth Zamzow knows about the building is that it has housed generations of antique shops and that it sits on an ideal location for attracting tourists and visitors passing by. But Virginia Kern knows that it was once a thriving grocery store; that's where she was born. Her father kept many of his neighbors in food with lines of credit during the great Depression. For many years after he retired in 1952, people still thanked him for helping their families survive those dark days. Some even returned years later to pay off Depression-era debts. "That's the kind of place that Allouez was - and still is," Virginia says. Kern's uncle, Rene Lagae, owned and operated Allouez Lumberyard. Lagae was responsible for many of the homes built in Superior during the early decades of the 20th century, when the shipping industry ruled the town. American Marine now stands on that spot. Nowadays, owners Kathy and Ray Meyer keep an eye out for the children who gather for the school bus on the corner by their thriving business, which serves the commercial shipping industry. "This is a good location for a business like ours," Kathy Meyer says. "Duluth-Superior is a major shipping Port where many ships put up during the winter. Allouez's connection to the shipping industry is a plus for us, and old-timers stop in now and then to tell us about how things used to be." Sometimes, in the rush of traffic and the crush of daily schedules, the way things used to be sounds pretty good. Especially if you knew Allouez in its golden days. "This was a place I was always proud to call home," says Bernadette Amys, Virginia's schoolmate. "But many of our people have died or have moved to nursing homes. There are new folks here who don't know the stories or understand about the way things used to be." If you drive toward the bay in the direction of the lonely abandoned ore dock, over the strip of land where railroad trains once rolled, you can find a lookout platform surveying grassy meadows where men once tramped and labored. A sign erected in 1973 tells the enterprising tourist that this was the site of the Burlington Northern Ore Docks, the largest in the world. Three structures of concrete and steel once stretched for 2,244 feet and soared 80 feet in the air. "More than one billion tons of ore have been shipped through these docks," the sign reads. "The largest shipping year was 32.3 million tons, in 1953. ... In the early years, 400 to 500 men worked on these docks. In 1973, less than 140 men were employed here." Today 80 employees operate the efficient BNSF Dock Number 5, still the Twin Port's largest taconite transshipment facility. But only ghosts and memories remain at the rest of the Allouez ore docks and in the handful of buildings that remain of a once-thriving settlement. This article, written by Cynthia Furlong Reynolds, is reprinted here by permission of NorthLife magazine, Duluth.
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llouez.
Once upon a time, that name represented jobs, financial freedom and a new life to
generations of immigrants in Superior, Wis. A century ago, Allouez was a thriving burgh
with countless boarding houses, dance halls, drug stores, candy shops, saloons, mercantile
establishments, trolleys, a bank, prestigious clothing stores, theaters, industrial jobs
and groceries. 
residents,
mostly Belgian, but also Polish and French, shipped out on freighters and sailed around
the world, loaded ore from the world's largest ore docks, clerked at one of the many
retail establishments, ran saloons and boarding houses or worked at the world's largest
grain elevator.
