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four stories, its capacity to 10,000 crypts, and its cost from $500,000 to $1.5 million. A contract
<br /> for building the first phase was awarded to the Madsen (Mattson, in some accounts) Construction
<br /> Company, a general contractor, in October 1932. This news was welcomed by laborers suffering
<br /> from unemployment during the Depression. The chapel was dedicated in January 1934. Plans for
<br /> substantially expanding the structure were never carried out.'
<br /> A preliminary review of historical information offered conflicting information on the
<br /> construction date of the administration building. A June 1927 newspaper reported that"roads
<br /> have been laid out and locations made for the $250,000 chapel and a$100,000 entrance building.
<br /> Construction of the latter will start this summer, officials of the park association said." A sketch
<br /> of the building appearing in a newspaper advertisement in August showed a small, single-story
<br /> structure with a pyramidal hipped roof topped by a cupola, quite a different design from what
<br /> was ultimately built. A newspaper article in October indicated that the building was not yet
<br /> erected. The administration building appears to be in place in a 1932 photograph of the mall that
<br /> was taken from the site of the chapel, although other photographs suggest that it was not built
<br /> until the mid-1930s. In any event, the administration building is certainly more that fifty years
<br /> old and its construction falls within the cemetery's period of significance.$
<br /> Morell and Nichols, Landscape Architects
<br /> Morell and Nichols, a Minneapolis landscape architecture firm, was responsible for the design of
<br /> Sunset Memorial Park. Anthony Urbanski Morell was born in France in 1875, was educated in
<br /> that country, and moved to the United States around 1902. During the same period, Arthur
<br /> Richardson Nichols, a Massachusetts native born in 1880, was the first graduate of the
<br /> Massachusetts Institute of Technology's landscape architecture program. Both men were
<br /> undoubtedly familiar with Parsons's Pinelawn Cemetery design. In the first decade of the
<br /> twentieth century, they worked for New York landscape architect/engineer Charles W. Leavitt
<br /> Jr., becoming acquainted with Minnesota while working on plans for the Chester Congdon estate
<br /> in Duluth.9
<br /> Morell and Nichols relocated to Minneapolis in 1909 and established their own firm. They soon
<br /> had an impressive list of institutional and business clients including the University of Minnesota,
<br /> Carleton College in Northfield, and other schools through North America; the Minneapolis and
<br /> Duluth park systems; the National Park Service; and the Minnesota Steel Company(producing
<br /> the plan for Morgan Park). They also designed private estates for wealthy clients in the United
<br /> 7"Construction to Start on Mausoleum and Chapel,"Minneapolis Journal, September 4, 1932; "$500,000 Chapel to
<br /> Be Erected at Sunset Park,"Minneapolis Tribune, September 4, 1932;"Chapel Mausoleum Contracts Awarded,"
<br /> Minneapolis Tribune, October 2, 1932;"$500,000 Chapel Project Launched,"Minneapolis Tribune,October 20,
<br /> 1932;"Three Pastors Aid in Dedicating Sunset Chapel,"Minneapolis Tribune,January 9, 1934.
<br /> 8"`Sunset Park'Cemetery Co.Extends Work,"Minneapolis Tribune,June 19, 1927;"Beauty Preserved Inviolable,"
<br /> advertisement from unattributed newspaper in Minneapolis History Collection,Minneapolis Public Library,August
<br /> 28, 1927;"Armours Back Memorial Park Development";"Architect's Drawing of$1,500,000 Mausoleum-Chapel,"
<br /> Minneapolis Tribune, September 4, 1932.
<br /> 9 Information on Morell and Nichols is taken from entries on the firm and on Morell and Nichols individually by
<br /> Gregory Kopsichke in Pioneers ofAmerican Landscape Design, ed. Charles A. Birnbaum and Robin Karson,253-
<br /> 257(New York: McGraw-Hill,2000).
<br /> Sunset Memorial Park Administration Building
<br /> Preliminary National Register and Condition Assessment Page 4
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