One hundred and thirty-eight years of service.

Edwin J. Albright, Founder · 1837–1912

The Founder

Edwin Albright opened our doors on April 14, 1888.

Edwin Jameson Albright was the son of a Bellefonte cabinetmaker. He apprenticed to the carpentry trade as a boy, served in the 148th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the War, and returned home in 1865 to a town that had lost too many of its sons. For two decades he kept a small carpentry shop on West Linn Street, building barns and church pews and, when called upon, coffins for his neighbors.

In 1886 he sold the carpentry business and went west to Philadelphia for two years to study mortuary science at the Eckels College of Embalming. He returned to Bellefonte in early 1888 with a license, a wife, three children, and a determination to build something permanent.

On April 14, 1888 he opened the doors of the building you see today, raised that spring from Bellefonte brick and limestone quarried at Pleasant Gap. The Albright family has lived in the apartment above it without interruption from that day to this.

The Building

One address, one family, one hundred and thirty-eight years.

The building at 124 East Linn Street has served three civic purposes since it was raised in 1888: it has been the funeral home of Albright & Sons, the residence of the Albright family, and a registered Pennsylvania Historic Landmark since 1981.

The Italianate brick exterior is original. The limestone quoins were cut at Pleasant Gap. The deep green door is repainted every seven years in the same color first selected by Edwin's wife Caroline in the spring of 1888. The chapel was modernized in 1952 by William Albright, and the on-site crematory was added in 1989 by Richard Albright. Otherwise the building stands as it was built.

The apartment above the chapel has been the home of every senior Albright director and his family for one hundred and thirty-eight years. There is no other building in Bellefonte that can claim the same.