After being diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1851, Calvin Oak was told he would be dead within six months. Oak decided to move his family from Vermont to Jacksonville, Florida in hopes that a warmer, sunny environment would cure his ailment. Surrounded by fresh air, Calvin Oak lived another 30 years and became one of Jacksonville’s most prominent businessmen. He built the first factory in the city, a gun plant that manufactured guns, barrels, and cartridges. Oak also purchased and operated a jewelry store on Bay Street.
In 1856, Calvin Oak and his son, Byron, opened a marble and mortuary business. After his father passed away, Byron continued growing the business as the Moulton & Kyle Funeral Home.
In 1914, Mark & Shetfall, a local architecture firm, was hired to design a two-story Prairie School style building at 17 West Union Street in downtown Jacksonville. Due to a high demand for parking, an attached garage was built several years later that featured a turntable, which allowed cars to drive in and turn around facing the street.
Over the years, the funeral home became known as the Kyle McLellan Funeral Home after S.M. McLellan purchased the business. In the early 1990s, the funeral home was sold to the Peeples Family Funeral Home. After almost a century of operating at the West Union Street building, the business was moved in 2013 to a new location with updated facilities. The building at West Union Street was abandoned and left to decay. Today, the abandoned funeral home has a partially collapsed roof and stands at the mercy of the harsh Florida weather.
Just wow.
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A funeral for $5 cash in 1895…..
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Another wonderful piece–I enjoy reading (and seeing) your work very much.
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Very Good work!
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Thank you!
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Your obsession with old buildings is contagious. I’ve started to blog about them as well! Nice work!
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I appreciate your comment. It is very contagious!
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Great pictures.
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Thank you!
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Wow..your photography is wonderful and the story these photos tell are worth the time it took to take them. Amazing the things we leave behind and those boxes with the cremated remains of those three women! I wonder why they were left behind… Thanks for sharing! 🙂
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Just curious if anyone has ever attempted to delivery the remains of the woman to their families. Surely someone would want them…..that makes me sad. Incredible photos and stories!
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They were probably unclaimed then and remained in the funeral home for the last 60+ years.
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I thought of that too. Somebody could easily find family members. Sad. Also wondering why they would leave behind such valuable items and not move them to the new building. Wondering if they had any looting of furniture, etc.
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I’ve photographed a lot of abandoned places but nothing as creepy and poignant as this funeral home. You handled it with skill showing what needs to be shown and the history you provided allows us to really get to know this place along with your photographs.
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Thank you, I appreciate it.
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Wow. I live down the street from Thomas Whitehead. It’s sad that the remains where left behind. I’d like to find my Uncle’s remains. He passed around 1993 in Jacksonville, FL. Wonder if he’s there.
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I would love to know if anything from this funeral home can be legally removed and kept, since it all appears to be abandoned. As a death educator with a licensed embalmer in the family, we would be highly interested in claiming any of these items for historical and educational purposes. Do you have any idea whom to contact about this? Thanks!
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The property is still owned by a funeral home across town.
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These photographs remind me of a foreclosed funeral home I toured while working for a bank. It was an old black funeral home. Not sure what year they opened but the quality of equipment and furniture was certainly not elegant. Some of the setup and techniques used in the embalming room were sad. In my instance I can understand everything being left “as is”. But I can’t imagine why a business would just walk away and leave everything (including business records and unclaimed bodies) just to move across town. Why do you think no one ever went back to clean stuff out?
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This has to be the result of a family argument. The funeral home appears to be upscale, so people who buy good caskets and have good ceremonies usually see the funeral home as a sacred place, a tomb that beloved family members were care for, washed and prepared. This is not only a strange incident, it is a strange part of the city, any city.
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