Flashback - December 1989 - Owensboro's Funeral Home Leaves Downtown After 56 Years

Move gives funeral home more space
Stewart Jennison ~ Owensboro's Messenger-Inquirer ~ 12/9/1989


Glenn Taylor is going to miss the downtown location where his family's funeral home business has operated since 1933.

"That's where I grew up. I learned to ride my bike in that parking lot," says Taylor, 40, vice president of Glenn Funeral Home located - until Monday - at 104 E. Fourth St.

But after four years of planning and nearly 14 months of site work and construction, Taylor and the 14 other employees of the funeral home and its related businesses are anxious to occupy their spacious new building on Old Hartford Road at Breckenridge Street.

Spacious is the operative word here. The new facility, with its 150-car parking lot, uses five of the nine acres the family corporation purchased from owners of the former Cardinal Drive In.

The two-story building encloses 20,500 square feet, according to building permit records.

"It's big for a reason," Taylor said. "We're serving a lot of families that need that much space." The new building has four visitation rooms plus a separate chapel. The Fourth Street building had three visitation rooms, including one that doubled as a chapel, and barely enough parking for 50 cars.

There's also a large lounge area with refrigerators where family members can relax, a library stocked with materials of help to families dealing with death and a special room where children can be at ease without disturbing adults.

Unseen by most visitors will be the wide corridors that encircle the public areas. The hallways and four-foot wide doors make it easy to move caskets and bundles of flowers from one area to another with a minimum of disturbance to families, Taylor said.

The upstairs includes a conference room where funeral arrangements are made, a casket selection room, a storage area and a residential apartment.

Taylor said the new structure also provides needed office space for Owensboro Memorial Gardens and Owensboro Pre-Arrangement Center, a funeral trust service.

Taylor said his family will miss its downtown location, which is now being offered on the real estate market, but there was no room for expansion there. "We were landlocked," he said.

Painters and other contractors were still busy making finishing touches in the new Georgian-design home Friday, but Taylor said all operations will officially move there Monday.

Traditions are important in the funeral home business, Taylor said, and two outside lamps that frame the main entrance doors are more than symbols of an earlier era: They are the original coach lamps from the horse-drawn hearse driven by his grandfather, W. E. Davis.

Lucy Glenn Taylor is president of Glenn Funeral Home. Allan Harl Jr. is corporate secretary of the funeral home and president of Owensboro Memorial Gardens.

The new building was designed by Louisville architect John Doomas. Lanham Brothers of Owensboro was the general contractor.