The former upstairs showrooms of Hughes-Ransom Mortuary & Crematory are filled with caskets, display shelves and other general storage. New owner Eric Anderson, who’s taking up residence above the mortuary, has also laid down blue tape to mark the two apartment rentals he plans to add by fall.
Anderson recently closed the sale on Hughes-Ransom’s Astoria and Seaside locations from Todd and Joy Slack. He is hoping the new apartments and opening the chapel to weddings and other community gatherings will help enliven the historic building.
Originally from Minnesota, Anderson has a bachelor’s in mortuary science and 20 years in the business. He moved to Oregon and mostly worked in the Eugene-Springfield area, including for the Slacks, the owners of Hughes-Ransom since 2013. Used to small, Scandinavian-tinged towns growing up, he jumped at the opportunity to buy them out of Hughes-Ransom.
Caskets sit on display at Hughes-Ransom Mortuary & Crematory. New owner Eric Anderson said he needs a lot less space today than before.
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
E.B. Hughes established the mortuary in 1913 and moved into the Harvey and Mary Pike residence at the corner of 12th Street and Franklin Avenue in 1923, remodeling the building to its brick facade in the 1930s. The mortuary added a smaller Seaside chapel in 1933.
“I’d like for more people to feel comfortable coming in,” Anderson said of the Astoria location. “Even on nice days, when the weather’s good, I’ll open up the doors here, and I’ll be running back and forth.”
Anderson offers cups of coffee and tours of the three-story, 10,000-square-foot building, from the chapel and viewing rooms down to the basement crematorium and embalming rooms, where he does his own body preparations.
“In the past, I think it used to be one of those kind of scary, dark things,” he said. “It’s the unknown portion that I think is really scary to people.”
Urns sit on a shelf in a showroom at the Hughes-Ransom Mortuary & Crematory.
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
The intersection of 12th Street and Franklin Avenue is an undertakers row, with Hughes-Ransom, Caldwell’s Luce-Layton Mortuary and Ocean View Cremation and Burial Service on three corners. The undertakers collectively handled the arrangements for around 90 percent of the more than 1,000 deaths reported in Clatsop County between 2016 and 2018.
Local funeral home owners say around 85 percent of their customers get cremations. The percentage of cremations first overtook burials for the first time in 2015, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.
The changes in the industry have left Anderson with a lot of empty space. Upstairs, he is turning a former casket room into a two-bedroom apartment, and a former urn room into a studio, hoping to start renting in the fall.
“It’s empty space up here, so why not for generating revenue and helping someone out with housing?” he said. “Back in the day, you needed this space, but not with new technology.”
Renee Caldwell, of Caldwell’s Luce-Layton Mortuary, said she lucked out with a significantly smaller building than Hughes-Ransom. Cremations only bring in around $1,000 a customer, while burials bring in exponentially more, she said.
“If I had all burials, I’d be making more money,” Caldwell said. “The problem is your taxes and everything else still go up every year. I think people are just concerned with their budgets.”
The three businesses that offer funeral services in Astoria are all centered around the intersection of Franklin Avenue and 12th Street.
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Brian Dutton, who opened Ocean View in 2008, has an even lower overhead than Anderson and Caldwell. He rents a small, ground-floor showroom, attached to separate rental units above, with no mortgage or property taxes to cover. He’s skipped on an embalming room, finding many customers forego that step.
“I don’t have a chapel to have services in,” Dutton said. “Most people who are having a service ... are not calling it a funeral. They’re calling it a celebration of life. They’re wanting to have it somewhere more upbeat. A funeral chapel is not a fun place to have a celebration of life.”
Anderson is hoping his open-mindedness will bring in more people to the spacious Hughes-Ransom. He invites people to bring in props and decorate the chapel for their needs. They can even press the button for their loved one’s cremation.
“Those are things that healing-wise could be good for them,” he said. “I’m no one to tell them how their grieving process should be.”
