Interior and Exterior
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1912 |
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Address: 3600 Hennepin Avenue
Neighborhood: East Harriet
Construction Date: 1908-1910
Contractor: Unknown
Architect: Harry Wild Jones
Architectural Style: Byzantine
Historic Use: Religious
Current Use: Religious
Date of Local Designation: 1984
Date of National Register Designation: 1983
Area(s) of Significance: Architecture
Period of Significance: 1900-
Historic Profile: The Lakewood Memorial Chapel is an excellent architectural example of the Byzantine style. Its mosaic chapel interior is unmatched in quality in any other Minnesota building. The chapel was designed by locally prominent architect Harry Wild Jones as a mortuary chapel and crematorium for Lakewood Cemetery. Jones patterned the chapel design after Hagia Shophia (537 AD) in Constantinople. Construction of the chapel began in 1908 using St. Cloud Granite for exterior walls and Spanish roll tine for the dome and other roofs. Designed by Charles Lamb, the mosaic chapel interior required the skill of trained artisans in Venice to set the estimated ten million tiles which were later delivered to the United States to complete the mosaics. The total cost of the building exceeded $150,000 and at the time of its completion was the only building in America with a mosaic interior. Lakewood Memorial Chapel is the most elaborate example of Byzantine Mosaic art in Minnesota and may be one of the finest of its type to be found anywhere in the United States.
Photo Credits:
1912, courtesy of The Minnesota Historical Society
2006, Minneapolis CPED
Works Cited:
"National Register of Historic Places – Nomination Form," February 1982.
Updated: February 2007