Whereas once when a person died, the family prepared the body at home, mourners visited at home, and one's community provided the labor for burial, new technology developed during and as a result of the Civil War—embalming— allowed funeral business to thrive. In the decades after the Civil War in New York City, carpenters became coffin makers and then undertakers, religious societies took on funerary responsibilities and liverymen who once only moved the deceased to outer borough rural cemeteries took on more mortuary duties. By the early 20th century, storefront undertakers served neighborhoods all over the city, catering to different ethnic enclaves and social-economic groups. They provided all-encompassing services: acting as notaries, securing wake, funeral and burial venues, and furnishing transportation. In 1917 commercial photographer William Hassler was hired by Sunnyside Magazine, a long-running undertaker trade journal to document some of New York's grimmest businesses. (It should be noted that The Sunnyside was not the only such publication, though it was the most pleasantly named; others included The Casket and The Weekly Shroud.) The resulting illustrated article was entitled "Grewsome Undertaker Establishments."

Necker Undertaker Storefront, ca.1914. William Necker was born in New Jersey, and after leaving school at age 12, he worked his way up in the ranks at the Braumuller Piano Company in New York City. By the early 1890s, he was the head of the wood-working department. In the mid-1890s Necker changed careers and took a course at United States School of Embalming. Over the next two decades, he opened more than 20 offices in New Jersey and New York City, including this East 138th Street storefront. Necker died suddenly in 1916, and while the business did survive, most of the branches closed. Purchase of another funeral home business in 1948 resulted in the Necker-Sharpe Funeral Home, which the family sold to a former employee in 1958.