Obituary for a Funeral Home: the McCluen House, ca. 1847-2021

Posted On November 28, 2021

By Sam Pickard

Last week the former Kish funeral home, a familiar landmark at Sproul and Lawrence Roads, passed into history. While the building at 1998 Sproul Road was recognized in the township’s 1983 historic resources survey as an “early structure,” due to the many alterations and additions over time and the lack knowledge regarding the history of the structure, the building was not included in the township’s inventory of protected resources.[1] Now, after 1998 Sproul Road has been demolished, it is worth looking back on this building’s roughly 174-year life.

The McCluen Years, circa 1847-1874

At the end of the 17^th century, the Rhoads family settled in Marple Township along with many early English Quakers. Joseph Rhoads established a tannery on his Marple farm in 1702, and the Rhoads family carried on the business in Marple into the 19^th century. The tannery would take the hides (skins) of animals, most often cows and oxen, and through a series of steps turn those animal hides into leather, which could then be used for anything from shoes to saddles.[2]

In October 1847, George Rhoads sold a two-acre tract along what is now Sproul Road to a 36-year-old currier named George R. McCluen (1811-1897) for $250.[3]

Curriers like McCluen worked in the leather industry, further refining leather produced by tanners. After the tanning process was complete, curriers might further manipulate the skins to prepare the leather for use in various products. The leather would be soaked in a tub of water until it was once again soft, then trod on or beaten for about 15 minutes to further soften it. The leather would then be cleaned, shaved to a uniform thickness, and stretched. Depending on the intended product, the leather would be even further worked by the currier to achieve the proper thickness, texture, and size appropriate. In making a saddle, for example, the leather might be trod on several more times before being repeatedly greased, blackened by tallow (animal fat), then pressed for up to two weeks to allow for the removal of excess tallow.[4]

It’s likely that McCluen built a house on the property, possibly consisting of the three northernmost bays of the main block. It was likely a relatively simple, two-and-one-half-story house—three bays wide and one room deep with a chimney at the southern end. Also located on the two acres was McCluen’s currier shop, likely northwest of the house, as indicated by historic maps.[5] McCluen and his wife, Mary Ann (Smedley) McCluen (1813-1889) had no children at the time they purchased the land, but over the next decade Mary Ann gave birth to at least two daughters and one son.[6]

Just three years after McCluen purchased the land, George and Joseph Rhoads’ tanning and currying business employed four people, processed around 1200 hides and skins annually, and produced $4,200 of leather goods a year. There were two other tanneries in Marple at the time—the Lewis tannery on Malin Road which produced $2,500 worth of leather annually and the Still & Bailey tannery, which produced $8,500 worth of leather annually. Additionally, George Brooke produced $5,300 worth of curried leather products in his two-man shop each year.[7]

George McCluen partnered with currier James S. Bell in the early 1850s, though by July 1855, Bell had moved to Chester and the firm was dissolved.[8] By 1860, McCluen’s currier shop was currying 1200 calf skins and 450 hides annually, which produced $7,135 of curried leather. Sadly, the prosperity was not to last. By this time, McCluen was the only currier left in Marple, and the Rhoads family’s operation was the only tannery.[9]

In 1868, the Rhoads’ tannery relocated to Wilmington, Delaware.[10] McCluen may have operated his currier’s shop until this time, though in 1864 his wife had purchased an additional four acres from the Rhoads family.[11] By 1870, McCluen was out of the currying trade and appears to have been conducting subsistence farming on his roughly six-acre parcel.[12] Finally, in March 1874 the McCluen’s sold their Marple property to John S. and Sarah Braden for $2,800 and moved to Media.[13]

Late 19^th and Early 20^th Century

John S. Braden was a 37-year-old carpenter, who with his wife Sarah had at least two daughters. Braden may have added onto the house, as the six-acre property sold for $3,400 in March 1882 to Leonard S. Thomas.[14] Thomas’ father, William Thomas, owned a 40-acre farm across the road from the property, on a site now occupied by Lawrence Park Shopping Center. Leonard Thomas may have lived in the house he acquired from Braden with his wife and children, but it seems likely that he eventually moved across the road when he and his sister inherited their parents’ farm.[15] Leonard sold the 6-acre parcel in October 1919 and over the next decade the property passed through a number of hands before it was acquired by Vincenzo Di Francesco.[16]

In the years before the Great Depression, Di Francesco acquired large tracts of land in Marple for suburban development—by 1929, he owned the entire southeast side of Lawrence Road, including the Massey House, and his landholdings stretched across Sproul Road to what is now Jamestown Road.[17] With the onset of the depression, however, Di Francesco sold large tracts of land to Philadelphia inventor and industrialist A. Atwater Kent.[18] Kent also envisioned developing the land in Marple, and it was to this end, that when he sold a 0.93-acre lot containing the house and a frame garage building on Sproul Road to George W. and Louise B. Clapp of Nether Providence, many restrictive covenants were included in the deed. In addition to bans on non-single family residential use of the property, the deed also banned radio towers, trucks parked in the open on the premises, and mandated size and materials for any new construction. The most notable restriction, which was unfortunately common at the time, was a racist ban on non-whites owning, leasing, or residing on the property unless they were servants.[19]

Finding New Life as a Funeral Home

If additions to the property had not already been made to form the final iteration of the main block, they were made during the Clapps’ ownership. In March 1960, they sold the property, now numbered 1998 Sproul Road, to the Phidel Investment Corporation for $27,500.[20] In 1962, Phidel Investment Corp. sought to sell the building to the Delaware County Real Estate Board, and entered into an agreement of sale pending the granting of a variance to the 0.93-acre parcel’s R-1 zoning (single-family residential). The Real Estate Board sought to demolish the house and build a one-story office building with 32 parking spots. After facing opposition from neighboring residents, the township’s board of adjustments rejected the petition.[21]

The house and lot at 1998 Sproul Road was instead sold to Thomas F. Roche in December 1963.[22] Roche had successfully obtained a variance to allow him to use the property as a funeral home and to build a two-story addition on the rear of the property. The property was sold by the sheriff in 1970, though Roche appears to have reacquired it through a company he named T. F. R. Inc.[23] The Thomas F. Roche Funeral Home continued to occupy the property throughout the 1970s until it was sold to the Delaware County Industrial Redevelopment Authority (DCIRA) in 1979.[24]

In April 1979, DCIRA sold 1998 Sproul Road to the Kish Funeral Home, which expanded the buildings on the property.[25] For unknown reasons, the 1979 deed was not recorded and a new deed was executed in 1998, formally clearing the chain of title for the property. The funeral home relocated in 2016 and the property sold and put up for lease by the new owners, 1219 MacDade LLC.[26] Five years passed, with the property becoming progressively more overgrown. Finally, in August 2021, Republic Bank filed an application to open a branch at 1998 Sproul Road.[27] The McCluen House, with all of its additions, was demolished during the week of November 15, 2021.

Due to more than a century of alterations and additions, the McCluen House at 1998 Sproul Road had largely lost the ability to easily represent its early history, much of which had been lost to time. While the house’s demolition removes another link to the township’s once prosperous leather industry, it is perhaps more noteworthy that a successful, decades-long adaptive reuse of a historic building ended with the slow and otherwise anonymous death of the McCluen House.

This post was edited on November 28, 2021 to clarify the ownership and transfer of the property between 1979 and 2016.

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[1] Delaware County Planning Department, Report on the Findings of the Delaware County Historic Resources Survey for Marple Township (Media, Pennsylvania: Delaware County, June 1983), 13.

[2] Doug, Humes, “The Rhoads Tannery, The Oldest Business in the U.S.,” Marple Friends & Neighbors Magazine, April 2020, https://issuu.com/bestversionmedia6/docs/2004-m_2988_marple_friends___neighbors_web_april20/s/10395635.

[3] Delaware County Deed Book P3:373.; Gilbert Cope, Genealogy of the Smedley Family, Descended from George and Sarah Smedley, Settlers in Chester County, Penna. (Philadelphia: Estate of Samuel Lightfoot Smedley, 1901), 251.

[4] J. de Fontenelle and F. Malepeyre, The Arts of Tanning, Currying, and Leather-Dressing; Theoretically and Practically Considered in All Their Details, trans. Campbell Morfit(Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, 1852), 461-475.

[5] D. J. Lake and S. N. Beers, Map of the Vicinity of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: John E. Gillette, C. K. Stone, 1860); Henry W. Hopkins, Atlas of Delaware County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: G. M. Hopkins, 1870), 43.

[6] 1850 U.S. Census, Schedule 1.—Free Inhabitants, Pennsylvania, Delaware County, Marple Township, sheet 209A, lines 34-36; 1860 U.S. Census, Schedule 1.—Free Inhabitants, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., page 106, line 16-20; Cope, Genealogy of the Smedley Family, 251.

[7] 1850 U.S. Census, Schedule 5—Products of Industry, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., pages 241-242.

[8] 1850 U.S. Census, Schedule 1.—Free Inhabitants, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., sheet 209B, line 16; “Dissolution,” advertisement, Delaware County Republican [Chester, Pennsylvania], 2 August 1855.

[9] 1860 U.S. Census, Schedule 5—Products of Industry, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., page 5.

[10] Humes, “The Rhoads Tannery,” 2020.

[11] Delaware County Deed Book H3, 51.

[12] 1870 U.S. Census, Schedule 1.—Inhabitants, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., page 2, lines 1-4; 1870 U.S. Census, Schedule 3.—Productions of Agriculture, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., pages 1-2, line 8; 1870 U.S. Census, Schedule 4.—Products of Industry, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., page 1.

[13] Delaware County Deed Book R3, 233; 1880 U.S. Census, Schedule 1.—Inhabitants, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Media Borough, page 25, line 50, page 26, lines 1-4.

[14] 1880 U.S. Census, Schedule 1.—Inhabitants, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., Enumeration District 009, page 11, lines 33-36; Delaware County Deed Book E5, 477.

[15] William S. Miller, St. John Ogier, William S. McDonald, and Forsey Breou, Farm Line and Borough Atlas of Delaware County, Penna. (Philadelphia: E. W. Smith and A. H. Mueller, 1892), plate 22; Ellis Kiser and J. M. Lathrop, Atlas of Delaware County East of Ridley Creek, volume I (Philadelphia: A. H. Mueller, 1909), plate 30; 1880 U.S. Census, Schedule 1.—Inhabitants, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., Enumeration District 009, page 11, lines 26-28; 1900 U.S. Census, Schedule No. 1.—Population, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., Enumeration District 0173, page 2A, lines 1-6; 1910 U.S. Census, Population, Pennsylvania, Delaware Co., Marple Twp., Enumeration District 0145, page 6B, lines 90-97.

[16] Delaware County Deed Book 469, 314; Delaware County Deed Book 912, 169; Delaware County Deed Book 913, 393.

[17] Frank H. M. Klinge, Atlas of Delaware County, volume one (Lansdale, Pennsylvania: Frank H. M. Klinge, 1929), plate 34; “Activities of Day in Real Estate,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 June 1929, 13.

[18] Delaware County Deed Book 913:416; Mabel Rosenheck, “Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent,” Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia,Rutgers University, 2018, https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/philadelphia-history-museum/.

[19] “Plans Sub-Division of 750-Acre Tract as Dwelling Sites,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 5 December 1937, W14; Delaware County Deed Book 1146, 549.

[20] Delaware County Deed Book 2013, 479.

[21] “Adjustment Board Considers Church,” Delaware County Daily Times, 7 February 1962, section 2, 1; “Adjustment Board Denies Variance,” Delaware County Daily Times, 23 March 1962, section 2, 1.

[22] Delaware County Deed Book 2164, 1081.

[23] “Marple Hears Zone Request,” Delaware County Daily Times, 21 August 1963, section 2, 1; “Sheriff Sales,” legal notice, Delaware County Daily Times, 2 July 1970, 23; “Real Estate Transfers,” Delaware County Daily Times, 3 October 1970, 15; “Broderick,” death notice, Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 May 1978, 6-B.

[24] Delaware County Deed Book 2689, 451.

[25] “Walter F. Joachim Sr.,” obituary, Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 January 1981, 12-D; Delaware County Deed Book 2558, 1112.

[26] Delaware County Deed Book 2558, 1112; Delaware County Deed Book 5830:1277; Google, Street View, GoogleMaps, 2007-2021, https://google.com/maps.

[27] “Notice of Filing an Application,” legal notice, Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 August 2021, B3.