37-36 61st Str, Woodside, NY 11377
About
Six rooms and a porch, described by what each one is for rather than by what it is called.
A doctor's house from before the war, altered several times since, which is why the rooms are the sizes they are rather than the sizes an architect would have chosen.
Seats 110
Plain, light, and belonging to no denomination. There is nothing on the walls, which is deliberate: whatever a family brings — a cross, a photograph, a flag, a prayer in any language — goes up for the day and comes down afterwards. A hearing loop runs the length of it and the front two rows are removable for wheelchairs.
Seats 40
Two of them, so two families are never in each other's way. Each has its own entrance from the hall, and each can be arranged with seating or left mostly empty for people to stand and move around.
Seats 60
For afterwards. Tea, coffee and something to eat, and somewhere for people to sit down who have been standing for two hours. Caterers are yours to choose; the kitchen is here and the room costs the same either way.
Seats 6
A round table rather than a desk, because a desk has a side you sit on and a side you do not. This is where the price list is put in your hands and gone through line by line.
Seats 4
Small, quiet, and next to the chapel. Somewhere to go before the service and somewhere to go if it becomes too much during it. Nobody has to explain why they are using it.
A car can pull in under cover, so an elderly mourner does not get out into the rain. It sounds like a small thing until it is January.
Nobody chooses a funeral home for its building. What people remember afterwards is four small things, none of which would be on a brochure.
A car pulls in under cover and everybody gets out on to a dry floor. It sounds like nothing in June. In January, with an aunt of eighty-one in a wheelchair and sleet coming sideways down 61st Street, it is the difference between a hard morning and a humiliating one. It is also why there is level access from that porch through to the chapel with no step in it anywhere.
Two families are never in each other's way. Each room has its own door off the hall, so nobody queues, nobody overhears, and nobody has to stand in a corridor while another family says goodbye. It halves how many afternoons we can offer and it is worth it every time.
Small, quiet, next to the chapel, with a door. Somewhere to go before the service and somewhere to go if it becomes too much during it. Nobody is asked why they are in there, nobody is followed in, and nobody is fetched out. About half the families who use it use it for a grandchild, and about half do not.
There is room for eleven cars behind the building, two of them wide bays beside the porch. A large funeral fills that in ten minutes, so the side streets take the rest, free after six in the evening. If you expect a large gathering, tell us at the meeting and we will say plainly how it usually goes rather than promise you it will be fine.
Written here rather than discovered at the door, because a family arriving with a wheelchair has had enough surprises for one week.
The office is on the first floor and there is no lift to it. In practice that has never once mattered, because the arrangement room is downstairs and anybody who would rather meet in the office is met downstairs instead — but it is a fact about this building and it belongs on a page about the building rather than in a conversation on the doorstep.
The accessibility page says the rest of it, in the same shape: what there is, then what there is not, with nothing rounded up in either direction.
You are welcome to walk round the building at any point, including before anybody has died and including if you go elsewhere afterwards. Nobody will follow you round it.