The Butterworth BuildingHistoric Places in Washington
, Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, October 1, 2008, p. 39. Accessed online 1 November 2009 or Butterworth BlockClarence B. Bagley, History of King County Washington, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, Chicago-Seattle, 1929, Volume III, pp. 781-785 at 1921 First Avenue in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

was originally built as the Butterworth & Sons mortuary, which moved into this location in 1903 and moved to larger quarters in 1923. Located on a steep hill, the building has only three stories on the First Avenue side, but five on Post Alley."The great firm of E. R. Butterworth & Sons", ''Seattle Mail and Herald'', vol. 7, no. 40: 13 August 1904, pp. 4-5, 16. Accessed on microfilm at Seattle Public Library. The building is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

(NRHP); adjacent to Pike Place Market, it falls within the NRHP's Pike Place Public Market Historic District and the city's Place Market Historical District. Now owned by the McAleese Family since 2005. The building was the city's first purpose-built mortuary building. Jeannie Yandel in 2009 described it as "The city's first place for comprehensive death-related services from corpse retrieval to coffin sales."Jeannie Yandel
Seattle's Coziest Embalming Room
, KUOW-FM, 31 October 2009. Accessed online 1 November 2009. Cited material is in the audio. The building had the first

elevator An elevator or lift is a wire rope, cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or deck (building), decks of a building, watercraft, ...

on the

West Coast of the United States The West Coast of the United States, also known as the Pacific Coast, Pacific states, and the western seaboard, is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous U.S ...

, used to transport bodies. A ''Seattle Mail and Herald'' account from August 1904, shortly after the building opened, calls it "without question of doubt, the most complete establishment of its kind in the United States…" A 2008 ''

Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington st ...

'' article describes the building, still extant, as " autifully appointed in stained mahogany, art glass, ornamental plaster and specially designed brass and bronze hardware…"Stuart Eskenazi
Ghost stories haunt Pike Place Market
''Seattle Times'', June 13, 2008. Accessed online 1 November 2009 The basement, accessible through Post Alley at the rear, is now (as of 2009) home to Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub.Kells Irish Pub (website)
/ref> Several recent accounts describe the Kells space as the former embalming room and crematorium, but the 1904 account says that the basement housed the building's heating plant, stables, and a storage space for funeral wagons. The building is associated with several ghost stories. In 2010, the building was featured on an episode of '' Ghost Adventures.''

Original configuration

In the original configuration of the building, the upper floor consisted of three flats for employees of the firm. This floor was accessed by a separate entrance at the south end of the First Avenue façade. The next floor below contained a showroom for

coffin A coffin is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation. Sometimes referred to as a casket, any box in which the dead are buried is a coffin, and while a casket was originally regarded as a box for jewel ...

s (caskets), a separate showroom of child-sized coffins, a room of women's burial garments, and a private reception and consulting room. The main showroom of coffins had a view out the back to

Elliott Bay Elliott Bay is a part of the Central Basin region of Puget Sound. It is in the U.S. state of Washington, extending southeastward between West Point in the north and Alki Point in the south. Seattle was founded on this body of water in the 1850s an ...

. The 35 caskets on display in August 1904 were priced from

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

25 to $200; garments ranged from a $4 robe to other garments costing as much as $125. These wide ranges of prices were typical of an establishment that intended to serve everyone from the poor to the city's wealthiest families. By policy, those who wished to remain with the bodies of their dead between encoffinment and obsequies were allowed to use the private rooms without additional charge. The next floor down was the main floor facing onto First Avenue. The floor contained private offices, morgues, an embalming room, and a "utensil room" to store canopies, pedestals, rugs, laying-out beds etc. These rooms were accessed through the main entrance. A separate door to the north led to a vestibule and a

funeral chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common type ...

with a main floor capacity of 150 and 50 in the balcony, as well as a separate

choir A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which ...

balcony. An adjacent room for use of clergy and family had a capacity of about 15, and connected to a "retiring room", basically a full bathroom. The room for the use of clergy and family had a private entrance separate from the entrance to the chapel itself. Also on the first floor was a special "best show room" with particularly fine caskets; even in 1904 some of these ranged in price as high as $890. The next floor down—below the First Avenue grade, but still above grade on Post Alley—contained a "stock room" with fireproof vaults in which bodies could be stored more or less indefinitely. The 1904 ''Seattle Mail and Herald'' account described these as "so much needed in Seattle when people are undecided as to the disposition of the dead", and up to the time of the construction of this building there was no such thing to be had in the city. The basement, level with Post Alley, housed the building's heating plant, stables, and a storage space for funeral wagons. Since 1983, the basement and stock room (now private banquet room) has been home to the McAleese family's Kells Irish Restaurant and Pub.

References

External links

* {{Pike Place Market 1900s architecture in the United States Commercial buildings completed in 1903 Buildings and structures in Seattle Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington (state) Death care companies of the United States National Register of Historic Places in Seattle Pike Place Market Reportedly haunted locations in Washington (state)