Marker No. 1
Smith Brothers Building
100 North Franklin Street
The Duluth Trading Company occupies this site which originally was the site of four separate buildings. In one of the buildings prior to 1899, Hugo Neundorf operated a harness shop and in the early 1900s Peter Strum operated a cobbler shop. The Strums lived above the shop and raised a family of 15 children. The Smith family acquired the first building on the block in 1924. In 1926 Evelyn Smith installed deep fryers in the family fish market and sold fried fish to take out. She obtained hearth-baked rolls from a local bakery, combined tartar sauce and fried perch fillets to make what became her famous fish sandwich. It was this stroke of fate that catapulted the Smith family into the restaurant business and eventually lead them to acquire the adjacent three buildings and develop a business that was family owned until 1988.