Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel

The Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel is a funeral home located on Madison Avenue at 81st Street in Manhattan. Founded in 1898 as Frank E. Campbell Burial and Cremation Company, the company is now owned by Service Corporation International. The funeral home is known for staging many celebrity funerals including that of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Rudolph Valentino, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Heath Ledger and The Notorious B.I.G.[1]

Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel on Madison Avenue at 81st Street in Manhattan

Frank Campbell, the founder of the business, was born on July 4, 1872, in Camp Point, Illinois. He moved to New York in about 1892, and married Amelia Klutz in 1898, setting himself up as an undertaker near Twenty-Third Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. His innovations in the business included the use of a funeral chapel, which he felt was preferable to having the services in the home of the deceased; advertising, which had previously been rare among undertakers, and the use of cars instead of horse-drawn carriages as hearses. He died on January 19, 1934, of heart disease.[2]