New York, NY - Urban Archive

South of Union Square

Story

The Business of Death

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."

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Urban Archive

1

165 Avenue A

165 Avenue A

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.

2

631 East Tremont Avenue

631 East Tremont Avenue

Over the next two decades, he opened more than 20 offices in New Jersey and New York City, including this East Tremont Avenue location.

3

497 East 138th Street

497 East 138th Street

Necker died suddenly in 1916, and while the business did survive, most of the branches closed.

4

1705 Second Avenue

1705 Second Avenue

The 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.

5

535 Second Avenue

535 Second Avenue

Grocery store, hat shop, luncheonette... undertaker?! This storefront at no. 535 Second Avenue serviced the neighborhood's funeral needs. ⚰️

6

522 Hudson Street

522 Hudson Street

Here is a rare interior photograph of one of Necker's storefronts. Coffin in the window, chairs for grieving families, and classy wooden desk for important undertaking business.

7

30 West 116th Street

30 West 116th Street

Winter & Reich were a team of Hungarian undertakers who like most of their competitors offered the full package for funerals: a chapel, a notary, automobile or coach services, connections to cemeteries citywide, and day and night availability.

8

206 West 30th Street

206 West 30th Street

Joseph Senger was French undertaker. Here a funeral procession seems to be ready to leave for a cemetery. Notice the floral business next door, a convenient neighbor.

9

42 Norfolk Street

42 Norfolk Street

Joseph Garlick was a Russian Jewish undertaker, one of many that served the bustling and crowded Jewish Lower East Side. A 1904 journal from the ASPCA noted that agent of the animal organization arrested Garlick for the neglect of the horses in his care (presumably those used for funeral coaches).

10

78 Mott Street

78 Mott Street

James Naughton (referred to as Joseph in at least one source) was born in Ireland and immigrated to New York in the 1860s. For more than five decades he served the Chinatown/ Five Point area as an undertaker. He purchased a number of local buildings including 78 Mott Street, as well as the stables at Nos. 31-37 which operated for both mortuary and police horse needs. Though Irish and certainly having enough Irish clients, he also advertised to and served both the local Italian and Chinese communities.

11

115 Avenue A

115 Avenue A

Peter Jarema is the only funeral business depicted for Sunnyside Magazine in 1914 that remains open and family run in its original neighborhood more than 100 years later! Jarema was a Ukrainian immigrant who began his undertaking career in 1906. By 1910 his business had moved into this storefront on Avenue A. Today the Peter Jarema Funeral Home is located at 129 East 7th Street. A largely intact 1960s era painted advertisement of the business can still be seen on the side of the building at 108 Avenue B.

12

123 Seventh Avenue

123 Seventh Avenue

Antoni Kwarcianski was a Polish undertaker who was also, for a time, the president of the Polish National Alliance of Brooklyn. He became a well-respected representative of the Polish community in New York.

13

22 West 133rd Street

22 West 133rd Street

H. Adolph Howell was a Caribbean immigrant, local Harlem businessman, and an undertaker, who moved to the neighborhood in the first decade of the 20th century. In 1914 his business was located here on 133rd Street, but by the 1920s he had moved into a building at 2332 Seventh Avenue. That H. Adolph Howell Funeral Chapel was considered one of the first "funeral churches" (what would come to be known as funeral parlors). In 1931, the funeral services for A'Lelia Walker, daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and mainstay of the Harlem Renaissance in her own right, also saw 10,000 mourners files passed her casket at Howell's Chapel. On the day of the funeral itself, more than 1000 people gathered outside the funeral parlor for the invite-only funeral.

14

112 West 133rd Street

112 West 133rd Street

J. Wesley Lane was another African American undertaker serving the Harlem neighborhood.

15

634 Morris Avenue

634 Morris Avenue

A Polish undertaker in the Bronx, E.W. Szydlowski noted the prices for his services on the window of his establishment. Child's Funeral $12 up Adult's Funeral $30 up Casket Funeral $60 up $60 in 1914 is equivalent to about $1,525 in 2019.

16

327 East 111th Street

327 East 111th Street

Vittorio Quirolo & T. Scaravaglione provided mortuary services to the Italian community of East Harlem. By the 1920s, 100,000 Italians lived in Harlem; it was the largest Italian American community in the United States.

17

2308 First Avenue

2308 First Avenue

Nino Baldessarri was another Italian undertaker in Italian East Harlem.

18

2248 First Avenue

2248 First Avenue

This Italian East Harlem undertaker festooned his establishment with bit more flare than the others on this list. One wonders if the decorations were put up specifically for the magazine photograph?

19

874 Lexington Avenue

874 Lexington Avenue

This interior photograph of the James E. McLarney establishment was not taken for the Sunnyside Magazine series. Captured a year later, the photo depicts the funeral setup for Octavio Davis, a Havana sugar executive who unexpectedly died while in New York. Described in the 1890s as "thoroughly reliable and one of the best-known establishments identified with the \[mortuary] business," McLarney had likely moved up in the funeral profession by 1915, occupying a well-appointed chapel in a fashionable neighborhood and catering to a more wealthy clientele than most of his aforementioned colleagues.

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