The two-story, fourplex apartments, known as the Sundts, were among the most comfortable housing in wartime Los Alamos. Courtesy/U.S. Government
Technical Area 1, better known at TA-1, surrounded Ashley Pond during the Manhattan Project. Courtesy/LAHS Archives
By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society
The old Sundts, the hastily built wartime apartment buildings in Los Alamos, are fading into history. As a kid living in one in the 1960s, I wondered how those old wooden structures got their name. As it turns out, that’s a fascinating story.
With time, I learned that the apartments were dubbed Sundts because that was the name of the builder, and with a little research it became clear that the M.M. Sundt Construction Company had played a much larger role in Los Alamos and New Mexico than I knew. As with any good story, we should start at the beginning.
Mauritz Martinsen Sundt was a young carpenter who had emigrated from Norway in 1881. He settled in Wisconsin, but he suffered from asthma and needed a drier climate. Like so many others, he headed to the Southwest. He had thoughts of going to Mexico, but as the train neared Las Vegas, NM, the conductor noticed that Mauritz had a bad cold and suggested that he might want to get off the train and take advantage of some nearby hot springs that could possibly cure his cold. He could board another train when he felt better. The young carpenter took the conductor’s advice and left the train. The hot springs did, indeed, improve his health, and Sundt found that he liked the climate and town itself. There were even prospects for work. At that time, Las Vegas was the largest city in New Mexico.
Sundt found a job as a carpentry foreman with a local building contractor, and, as one of his first jobs, he helped build Springer Hall, the first building on the campus that would become New Mexico Highlands University. With a co-worker, Sundt eventually bought out his employer, and in 1890, the company became M.M. Sundt, Builder. The La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe and the buildings and facilities for the New Mexico National Guard at Camp Luna were among their first out-of-town projects.
By 1929, M.M.’s son, Thoralf, had become an architect, and the first family cooperation took on an out-of-state project, a Methodist church in Tucson, Ariz. The company soon transferred its headquarters there to build several major buildings on the growing campus of the University of Arizona. And, with some irony, Sundt built what became known as the Pond Mansion in Tucson, the home of Florence Pond, sister of Ashley Pond Jr. Less than a decade later, the company would have a much larger connection to Los Alamos.
As quoted from the Sundt website, “One of Sundt’s signature jobs came when World War II was almost a year old.” Gene Sundt recalled a morning in late November 1942, when he was contacted by the Albuquerque District Engineer’s Office of the U.S. Corps of Engineers.
“A few minutes before 8 on the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1942, I walked up the steps of the old brown sandstone Simms Building at Fourth and Gold and told the receptionist that Tommy Hightower was expecting me,” Gene Sundt remembered.
“As I entered Tommy’s office, I asked him, ‘What’s up?’ He said, ‘Let’s go for a ride.’ “I followed him out of the building, got into the back seat of a government car, and he told the driver to get going. I asked where we were going and what it was all about, but Tommy just grinned and said I would find out when we got there.”
The two-hour drive ended 35 miles northwest of Santa Fe at an isolated area in the Jemez Mountains. M.M. Sundt Construction Company had been selected to build a secret project that included the buildings around Ashley Pond that became TA-1 and several two-story apartment buildings for scientists and their families—“a scientists’ enclave, complete with housing and laboratories”.
Sundt Company was to visit Los Alamos again many years later. In 2000, after the Cerro Grande Fire, Pajarito Canyon was left vulnerable to extreme flooding after the fire burned vegetation that would absorb runoff in the case of heavy rains. Again, speed was essential to the project. Sundt constructed a flood control structure one mile upstream from then-active TA-18, and they did it in 63 days!
Sundt has become one of the nation’s largest and most innovative general contractors. Their website lists projects ranging from Launchpad 39A at Cape Canaveral to the Reunion Tower building core in Dallas, Texas, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to the assembly of London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. Many international accomplishments are listed to their credit as well.
To read more about the young Norwegian who emigrated to America, go to https://r85.227.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Sundt-History-Book.pdf. It’s an amazing story that I didn’t have room to cover here.