Welcome to the Aquitania Suite. This is a special feature in the self-guided audio tour just for our guests who are in the Aquitania Suite and can’t get enough local Duluth history.

There were three live-in staff rooms on the third floor, and the Aquitania Suite is one of those original staff rooms. It is directly adjacent to the hidden servants’ staircase that runs all four floors.

From here, the staff could service each level with direct access to the kitchen, the pantry, the icebox, the cellar, the boiler room, the wood storage, the laundry, and the lower-level family room. They could traverse all these areas and truly run the house without ever setting foot in any of the main parts of the house.

It was truly two homes in one.

Aquitania gets its namesake from the transatlantic cruise ship by Cunard. In the summer of 1924, daughter Mary married Phelps Kelly of Chicago. This was a storied wedding of two prominent families and was advertised in both The New York Times and the Duluth Tribune.

The family had moved away to New York in 1916 and came back to Cotton Mansion in the summers to beat the heat. In 1923 and 1924, Josephine and Mary both had summer weddings at the Cotton Mansion. Mary was raised during an interesting time of war, pandemic, and technological revolution. She spent a year in Florence, Italy, shortly after World War One at a finishing school before being brought out into high society.

After a wedding in Duluth, Mr. and Mrs. Phelps Kelly set sail on Aquitania for a year-long honeymoon in Paris.

Aquitania was a Cunard ship and one of the handful of massive luxury transatlantic cruise ships during the era of the Titanic. Around the room are original postcards and memorabilia from the actual Aquitania ship, including an original 1920s rate list for the different levels of travel.

These old ships were really floating palaces.

Imagine the amount of steamer trunks you would need to lug around and make a voyage like that for a year.

If you’d like to learn more about the Cotton Mansion, the Cotton family, and early-1900s Duluth history, consider following the main self-guided audio tour. There are 12 stops that take you from top to bottom through the common area, starting with the QR code on the console in the foyer of the main level.