Local News

Back to the present

This 1907 photograph of the Hallberg & Osterberg Bakery and Grocery at 207 E. Fleshiem St. in Iron Mountain was submitted by the Menominee Range Historical Museum in Iron Mountain.

The building could have been erected as early as 1883 and was certainly built by 1889. In 1892, K.J. Holmes, a clerk in William Sundstrom's hardware store next door, lived here. Hallberg & Osterberg -- Peter Hallberg and Charles J. Osterberg-- worked as bakers here by 1902, both men also residing in the building. By 1907, the business had expanded to include groceries as well as bakery goods. Peter Hallberg, his wife Annie Hallberg and Selma Hallberg, a teacher, all lived here at that time, as did Charles J. Osterberg.

The business still operated here in 1913, with all still living here in 1925.

August Lilja, former owner of the building, remembered that Hallberg & Osterberg baked their bread on bricks, and they also made Swedish hardtack -- large round thin wafers with a hole in the middle, many of which were sold to the lumber camps.

In 1935, the building was listed as "vacant."

The other photo shows the building today, converted into apartments.