The old Schellhaas Funeral Home building on East Street with its distinctive green marble facade could be considered a relic of a bygone era in Pittsburgh’s North Side community.

It was one of more than a dozen funeral home businesses that prospered during the 1960s when the area was a melting pot of different racial and ethnic groups and religious congregations that typically supported a particular funeral parlor because of its affiliation with their group.

But the area endured significant changes in the mid-1980s when the construction of Interstate 279 displaced thousands of people who lived along the highway’s path from the Allegheny River to McKnight Road. Eventually all but one of the 18 funeral homes that had served the area either shut down or moved north along with their clientele.

The funeral home business tends to be a stable one. While openings and closings of other businesses such as restaurants and retail stores are fairly common, the closing of a funeral home or a change in ownership can often be a way to track significant shifts in the racial, ethnic or religious population.

“When a funeral home shuts down, it’s a force of demographic trends in every case I have seen,” said Robert Pierce, president of Pierce CFO in Gainesville, Fla., a company that helps investors buy and sell funeral businesses. “If a funeral home truly shuts down due to non-demographic reasons, it usually reopens as another funeral home.”

That theory can be used to track the changes on the North Side, where some old-time names from the neighborhood are now found in North Hills communities and where some of the old funeral homes have new owners who have converted them to uses that serve the changed community.

From Schellhaas to Sperling to Robinson, Simons and Brady, the industry names have all adapted. They had to. In an industry with tight profit margins, funeral businesses that don’t adapt don’t usually survive, Mr. Pierce said.

The population shifted north

The Sperling family had operated a funeral home in central North Side since 1923. As business began to slow, the family saw the writing on the wall. In 2006, they relocated to McCandless.

“We could see the population shift, and it shifted north,” said Jarett Sperling, supervisor of Sperling Funeral Home. 

According to Walter Sperling Jr., president of Sperling Funeral Home, the company was founded on Lockhart and Nash streets, across from the Priory Hotel. The government purchased their original building when it began procuring property for the I-279 project, which is why in 1963 the family relocated Sperling Funeral Home to Cedar and Lockhart streets, adjacent to Giant Eagle.

The Sperlings served a large group of German and Polish families. A significant share of their business in the early years also came from the Methodist and Catholic churches. But as time went on, they found there was less of a religious connection to the funeral services and fewer families to serve.

Ten years ago, the Sperling family purchased a former State Farm office building on Blazier Drive and converted it to a funeral parlor. They sold their old building on Cedar Street to a law firm.

“We saw the families we serve moving to the North Hills,” said the elder Mr. Sperling. “They would come back to us. But the second generation — their children — did not. They were established in the community out here.”

A loss, an opportunity

Mr. Pierce said funeral homes are highly vulnerable to population changes because they operate on small profit margins. He said the average number of services for funeral homes around the country is about 200 a year. In Pennsylvania, he estimates funeral homes conduct about 60 services or fewer because they typically cater to specific ethnic groups, races or religions.

“If they lose 5 percent of their calls, they really, really know it. It often has to do with a loss of population or a moving population, such as people moving from the city to the suburbs,” Mr. Pierce said.

But when the demographics of an area is shifting, one funeral home owner’s problem can be another owner’s opportunity. 

When the Perry Hilltop community began transitioning from a predominantly white community to a predominantly black neighborhood in the late 1990s, Simons Funeral Home, which had served the white community, sold its building at 2025 Perrysville Ave. to Odell Robinson, an African-American funeral director with deep roots in the neighborhood.

Around the early to mid-1990s, African-American families who had lived in the Hill District, Manchester and other parts of the city embraced the larger homes and nicer North Side communities.

The black-owned funeral home business founded by Odell Robinson’s father in 1950 at 614 Taylor Ave. was one of the four black funeral homes and the 14 funeral homes serving the white community that were all concentrated within a one-mile radius on the North Side during the 1960s and 1970s.

The Robinson family in 1997 purchased the funeral home in Perry Hilltop owned by G.S. Simons. Mr. Simons owned another funeral home on Old Perry Highway and decided to move all his business to that location. The Robinson family closed the Taylor Avenue funeral home and moved all its business to Perry Hilltop.

“As our neighborhoods changed as far as the lower North Side, the neighborhood up here was a nice neighborhood and we had a lot of black people who moved into this area,” Mr. Robinson said. “People were looking for better schools, better housing and things of that nature.”

Mr. Robinson said he does not get the 400 service calls a year his predecessor had serviced because the area no longer has the population it once did.

Other transitions that he sees have to do with the funeral industry itself. He sees more families who do not have the means to afford a decent burial. They have no insurance, savings, or jobs, which was not typically the case when the steel factories provided employment as well as insurance.

Families low on funds will often opt for a memorial service rather than a full-fledged funeral. Mr. Robinson said he also is doing more cremations, which also brings in less revenue.

What to do with an old funeral home

“We kept operating our East Street location for 20 years after I-279 came in,” said Matt Schellhaas. The business kept going despite losing its parking lot due to the highway construction. “There were still plenty of families to serve and we were not sure what would happen.

“But the business we got was less and less every year. Eventually we felt we could better serve those families in our West View location.”

For the past five years, an engineering firm, A&A Consultants, Inc., has leased the old Schellhaas Funeral Home building. A manager there said the company had considered buying it but parking is a hassle and the layout — designed for a funeral home operation — forces people to walk through her office to access the back of the building.

Such buildings are often difficult to convert to other uses. They may include a chapel, a series of small visitation rooms, wide 15-foot hallways, a display room for caskets, an embalming room and a business office. 

A&A Consulting recently purchased its own building.

“Vacant funeral homes are a tough sell because they don’t make good ice cream parlors,” Mr. Pierce said.

Brady Funeral Home outlasts others

In recent years, the North Side has been experiencing another transformation — with a growing population of young professionals moving into the revitalized Mexican War Streets and North Avenue area.

Still, funeral directors say the influx is not likely to improve the outlook for funeral homes. The new arrivals are mostly a younger population. When a death occurs in their immediate or extended family, they tend to call on funeral homes in the communities they came from.

The last remaining funeral home in central North Side is the Stephen M. Brady Funeral Home at 920 Cedar Ave.

During the 60 years it has been in business, it has outlasted others largely by keeping costs low, according to Stephen Brady, 68, who leads the family owned business.

“For years, we had no employees, which kept our overhead down,” Mr. Brady said. “I once asked my father, ‘When do I get paid?’ His response was, ‘Every time you pull your knees under the dinner table that’s your paycheck.’ With six kids in the family, we had a lot of mouths to feed, but we also had a lot of free help.

“I don’t have a staff electrician or handyman. I do it all myself with my son and two daughters,” he said adding that his clientele comes from the North Side, Spring Hill and Troy Hill. 

”There’s not a whole lot of people in central North Side. But our costs are low and families can afford us.”

Tim Grant: tgrant@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1591.

First Published: May 30, 2016, 4:00 a.m.