It’s strangely out of place in the midst of the hustle and bustle around Ashby BART station: a picture-book chapel next to a large brown building that tries to look Elizabethan.
The block directly across from the transit center was once Berkeley’s first, largest, and best funeral home – and, oddly enough, a wedding venue too. For nearly a century, the Hull Undertaking Company and the adjacent Little Chapel of the Flowers ushered in the beginning of a new life and bid farewell to those who left.
Berkeley only really came into its own when Frank W. Durgin opened the ward’s first morgue in the 1890s. As a furniture maker, it made sense to branch out to funeral homes as well, and his early ads read, “Durgin & Bleakley: Furniture and Businesses.” At the turn of the 20th century, Durgin had teamed up with William Mark Hull, whose name would grace the company for most of its existence.
In 1924, the Hull Undertaking Co. unveiled their massive new operation at 3051 Adeline St. It cost $ 28,000 (over $ 430,000 today) and was opulent in every way from its pretty stained glass windows to its cobblestone walkways and streets Thatched roofs. It was a one-stop funeral supplies shop, with an insurance office, embalming room (now on the second floor of a modest converted office space), private apartments, and a flower shop. This florist would come in handy for both funeral arrangements and wedding bouquets.
The exterior of Hull Undertaking Co. and Chapel of the Flowers in a 1940 postcard.
City of Berkeley / Handout
In 1928 they added the wonderful Small Flower Chapel with its distinctive onion dome. According to local lore, the chapel was the idea of a homesick woman. Allegedly, Hull’s mother, Mary Ann Parson, showed her son photos of churches in her hometown of Chipping Norton, England, and asked him to build one for her. But a quick fact check shows that this is unlikely.
“Churches and chapels in Chipping Norton are stately and austere in their design,” says a proposal from the city to grant the building the status of a landmark. (However, while British churches are very rarely thatched, the Cotswolds region is known for quaint, thatched houses in Parson’s childhood.)
The exterior of Berkeley’s Hull Undertaking Co. and Chapel of the Flowers in a 1950 postcard.
City of Berkeley / Handout
More likely, the style is modeled on other picture-book buildings in Berkeley, such as Normandy Village and the nearby Tupper and Reed music store. Regardless of its origin, however, the chapel became the dominant landmark on the route and the first funeral home in the East Bay.
Unfortunately for its owners, shortly after the construction, the Depression came and pompous funerals were simply not in sight for an average family. Their print ads in the 1930s show an emphasis on luxury on a budget, all a bit strange considering it was about death. One ad boasted “the inspiring music of a great pipe organ” and “luxurious Cadillac cars with uniformed attendants”.
“There is no other Little Chapel of the Flowers in the East Bay. Nothing that even comes close to it, ”brags the ad. “But Hull & Durgin use this beautiful chapel with any service at no additional cost.” A full service started at $ 100; that’s about $ 2,000 adjusted for inflation, which isn’t too shabby considering the average funeral costs at least $ 7,000 today.
Although its primary function remained a funeral home, the quaint and affordable chapel became a popular wedding venue after World War II. For a time it was one of the East Bay’s most sought-after venues. More than 500 weddings were celebrated there in the late 1940s and 1950s. A look at old Bay Area newspapers reveals thousands of mentions of Hull & Durgin, evenly split between funeral and wedding announcements.
The interior of the flower chapel can be seen on this promotional postcard from the 1950s.
City of Berkeley / Handout
The block of buildings was sold to another morgue in the 1960s, which kept the business going until the move to Telegraph Avenue. In 1971 a group of investors bought the block to convert it into a multipurpose space. Over the years, it has hosted night classes, the Marmot Mountain Works outdoor gear shop, and the West Coast Print Center, a local literary landmark.
The buildings were slightly remodeled over the last half century to accommodate modern restaurants and offices, but have remained amazingly intact today, a remarkable tribute to the place where life and death once crossed in Berkeley.
The sign for the Marmot Mountain Works, which closed in 2012, still adorns the exterior.
Douglas Zimmerman / SFGATE
