Some of the best-preserved Victorian mansions in cities across the US survived over time because they served as funeral homes for much of the twentieth century. Starting from this observation, cultural historian Dean Lampros asks how and why funeral businesses moved into these stately homes in residential areas beginning in the interwar decades. While Preserved is not written as a business history (its origins are in historic preservation scholarship), this imaginative and well-researched study explores funeral homes as a very peculiar site of business within changing American cities. By investigating the intersection of commercial and ritual spaces, the professional reframing of an industry, and the interactions of funeral directors with their customers and communities, the study offers broader insights into the relevance of space and architecture with regard to marketing and industry development.

Exploiting trade journals, court cases, memoirs, and numerous other sources, Lampros tells a story of professional and cultural change during the early decades of the twentieth century. The migration of funeral homes into residential areas and opulent mansions coincided with a societal shift from home funerals to commercial venues and happened at a time when an embattled funeral industry sought to professionalize and legitimize its trade in the eyes of the wider public. Six chapters focus on different aspects of this narrative in rich detail and with engrossing illustrations. The first section details the transformation of early downtown funeral businesses located typically in main street commercial districts from mere retail and business spaces into increasingly home-like establishments that offered ceremonial spaces for viewings and memorials. Expanding on this trend, a growing number of funeral directors then began to acquire opulent mansions in the years around World War I in residential areas adjacent to the inner city. The new locations were advertised not only as quiet and dignified but also as equipped with modern amenities including ample parking space. Residential funeral homes offered repurposed spaces for public viewings and memorial services as well as “slumber” rooms for more private moments with family and close friends. Openly “commercial” retail spaces as well as facilities for the embalming of bodies were carefully separated from these ceremonial spaces; the layout of the “modern” funeral home took shape here.

Subsequent chapters delve into the contested nature of funeral homes in residential neighborhoods and into the changing public image of the funeral industry at the time. Initially, the move of a stigmatized trade into respectable suburban neighborhoods was met with conflict and protest. Lampros details numerous court cases between funeral directors and their neighbors as well as municipalities along with businesses openly challenging residential zoning efforts labeling funeral homes as nuisances. After all, the move into more upscale neighborhoods was not only owed to a new business model in which public memorials became part of the commercial package offered by the industry. The relocation into representative mansions was also part of a broader public relations strategy of an industry that faced severe criticism for allegedly shady and exploitative business practices from the funeral reform movement. As such, funeral homes pursued this change in venue as a symbolic move into “respectable” society.

The final set of chapters thus turns to the establishment of the American funeral home as both a legitimate place of business and as an accepted ceremonial space by midcentury. Lampros analyzes the funeral home as a retail space that took its cues from department stores and other institutions of mass consumption. The “American way of death,” much maligned for its commercialization and materialist excesses, he argues, was the result of a delicate balance between modern simplicity and popular luxury on part of funeral homes, which gained legitimacy from embedding themselves within broader patterns of mid-century consumer culture. At the same time, the success of the residential funeral home also benefited from broader cultural shifts with the decline of the home funeral, still the predominant form of burial service well into the interwar years. As death became institutionalized and housing patterns changed (e.g., with the disappearance of the Victorian parlor), more and more Americans turned to the convenience and aestheticized commercial offerings of the residential funeral home.

Preserved: A Cultural History of the Funeral Home in America offers an engaging and insightful argument about the relevance of space for businesses, especially in culturally sensitive industries. Lampros’ broad national perspective cannot fully do justice to the regional and social differences and nuances when it comes to funerary culture and the mortuary trade. While African American funerals, for example, receive due consideration, differences between urban and rural communities or the pluralism of ethnic and religious funerary practices remain somewhat underexplored. And whereas Lampros carefully situates his narrative within the historiography of American deathcare and makes good use of the literature on consumer culture, we learn less about how the funeral home fits within larger trends of urban history or with studies on the transformation of downtowns. This, however, does not diminish the achievement of his study and the potential it holds for readers interested in business history. Future research can build on this work to further explore the social and contested character of retailing spaces as well as the role of architecture in public relations for small business and in legitimizing “taboo industries.”