Bob Dylan Birthplace — Duluth, Minnesota

Robert Allen Zimmerman — later Bob Dylan — was born in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24, 1941, and spent the first six years of his life at 519 N 3rd Avenue East, a modest duplex where the Zimmerman family occupied the top-floor apartment. His father Abe contracted polio, which forced the family to relocate to Hibbing in 1947, where Abe's brothers could provide support.

Dylan's Duluth years predated his musical ambitions, but the industrial port city on Lake Superior — with its iron-range culture and hard-weather working-class character — shaped the broad Midwestern sensibility that would later inform his songwriting. The house sits within walking distance of Lake Superior's waterfront, in a neighbourhood of wood-frame homes and steep streets.

The Duluth Armory, where Dylan saw Buddy Holly perform just three days before Holly's death in the plane crash of February 3, 1959, stands not far away. The Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial, honouring three Black men lynched in Duluth in 1920, is also in the city — an event that left traces in Dylan's moral imagination even if he rarely spoke of it directly. Duluth was the city that preceded everything, the place before Hibbing and before New York.

On Dylan's 75th birthday in May 2016, a small round commemorative plaque bearing his likeness was embedded in the front sidewalk. The property is now a pilgrimage stop on Dylan-themed tours of Minnesota. Each May, Duluth holds Dylan Fest with a birthday celebration near the house. The house is a private residence — visitors should view it from the street.