Background
Sundeleaf was born in Portland"s Goose Hollow neighborhood in 1900, and moved at age 6 to a neighborhood just north of Sellwood that was then known as City View Park.
Sundeleaf was born in Portland"s Goose Hollow neighborhood in 1900, and moved at age 6 to a neighborhood just north of Sellwood that was then known as City View Park.
After graduating from Washington High School in 1918 he attended the University of Oregon"s School of Architecture, in Eugene, graduating in 1923.
He trained in the Beaux Arts style of traditional design. After graduation he returned to Portland. He began working for the firm of A. East. Doyle in 1923 and remained with Doyle for a year.
He then worked for four years with the firm of Sutton and Whitney.
After working for other architecture firms, he decided to open his own firm in 1928. During the Great Depression, he worked for the Historic American Buildings Survey.
During this time he became known for his imaginative work in industrial architecture. He combined his decorative training with a rugged functionalism in a series of distinctive warehouses and offices.
In the 1940s, his style changed somewhat when he became a proponent of the Streamline Moderne style, "in which the spirit of the machine age and the concepts of aerodynamics shaped the design of the building", The Oregonian wrote in its obituary of Sundeleaf.
He designed numerous residential and public buildings around Portland. Sundeleaf carried out several projects for Portland-based Jantzen Knitting Mills, including design of a new headquarters building and factory building in Portland, as well as buildings in Australia and England. In 1935 Sundeleaf designed a Tudor style English cottage for the University of Oregon chapter of Chi Psi in Eugene, Oregon.
The Chi Psi Fraternity House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1993.
Many of Sundeleaf"s English cottages would be constructed in suburban Portland. Sundeleaf lived in Lake Oswego, Oregon, from 1940 until his death, and he designed many homes in that area.
One of the latter, the Doctor Walter Black House, is listed on the NRHP. Sundeleaf also designed the NRHP-listed 1934 Paul F. Murphy House, in Northwest Portland. Sundeleaf died on March 8, 1987, at his home in Lake Oswego.
His career included over 3000 projects.
Oregon Portland Cement, 1929
Headquarters of Jantzen (Portland), 1929. And British headquarters of Jantzen in London, England, 1933
Mailwell Envelope Company, 1931
Fliedner Building remodel, 1931
Woodbury and Company warehouse, 1939
Bearing Service Company building, 1944
General Company building (now Dynagraphics Incorporated), 1945
Francis and Hopkins Motors showroom (which later became the University Station Post Office), 1949
The original Oregon Museum of Science and Industry building, 1955
Portland Medical Center (a conversion of the 1929 Eastern Building, a former department store at Southwest 10th and Washington), 1957.