He and Gilbert were active in a number of masonic orders and regulars at the Arctic Club, the Third Avenue cognac-sipping and cigar-smoking salon where the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition was conceived. E. R., as he was known, had served in the state legislature and chaired the Republican caucus. Five stories built for and dedicated to the business of death.Įdgar Ray Butterworth, 64, and his five sons, notably 39-year-old Gilbert, were the most successful undertakers in King County and were prominent among Seattle’s ruling class. There was nothing like it in the United States. Butterworth and Sons, he’d jump off the streetcar just before 1921 First Avenue, where he’d be greeted by the building’s Greco-Roman arches, a passageway, of sorts, from this life into the next. If a rider were unlucky enough to have business at E. R. The car crossed Pike Street, home of the new Public Market, and slid past Bartell Drugs and, on the left, the Butterworth Building, the last place in 1911 (or in any time) a Seattleite hoped to be destined.

And like so many world-changing innovators-Bill Boeing, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos-they did it right here in Seattle.Įvery few blocks clouds of steam escaped from beneath the street and lingered on the sidewalk like phantoms. At the very least, they helped popularize the expensive rites (satin-lined open caskets, lavish limousine processions) we’re accustomed to today. It could be argued, in fact, that they invented the American funeral as we know it. Butterworth and his sons were innovators. But he puts his foot down when it comes to talk of corruption.Į. R. Reporters have been requesting interviews (usually around Halloween) since the late ’80s. “With all due respect,” he boomed through the phone on a recent afternoon, “you have no idea what you’re talking about.” The 63-year-old retired funeral director is good-humored about the ghoul stories associated with his family’s business. Butterworth’s great-great grandson-says it ain’t so. The implication was that the Butterworths were among the hearse racers. Butterworth and Sons, she said, were “accused of collecting corpses for cash.” The reference was to a book titled Cemeteries of Seattle, which reports that in the early 1900s undertakers raced each other to stockpile dead bodies, for which the city would pay $50 a head. KOMO interviewed an internationally known paranormal investigator who said, “This place was the site of a very corrupt mortuary.” A KOMO newscaster spared no alliteration to elaborate. In November 2010, KOMO 4 ran a news segment titled “Ghost Hunt,” filmed on location at Kells Irish Pub, which now occupies the ground floor of the former Butterworth funeral home.

The chapel is the money shot on the Market Ghost Tour.

Exquisite corpse book