New owner of old Griffin Funeral Home making over $1M in renovations 

Griffin Funeral Home

The emerald green mansard roofs are gone. So are the columns that graced the front entrance which relatives of famous loved ones passed through to pay final respects. 

Today, the building that for decades housed the historic but closed Griffin Funeral Home has a new look that has wiped away 60 years of Black history.  

The building at 3232 S. King Drive that once resembled a traditional two-story home, today looks nothing like its former self. It is now a boxy structure covered with gray limestone featuring modern, urban accents. The entire second floor has been rebuilt and painted with a baby blue color.    

In the past several months workers have been gutting and transforming the structure to serve a new, but undisclosed purpose.  

The Griffin Funeral Home marquee remains blown out while building materials fill the parking lot as workers hammer away, turning a relic of Black Chicago’s past into a structure that is now a symbol of Bronzeville’s uncertain future as a gentrified historic Black neighborhood that is losing its identity.  

Old griffin funeral home
The old vacant Griffin Funeral Home in Bronzeville resembled a two story middle class home before it was bought and renovated.

During a visit to the site by a Crusader journalist, workers declined to give details of the building’s present construction work. However, two separate building permits from the Chicago Department of Buildings show the new owner, Klein Yona, who lives in north suburban Skokie, is paying a total of $1,003,200 in renovations to the property. One permit says the north garage of the former Griffin Funeral Home was demolished and another permit shows extensive repairs to the roof which collapsed due to storm damage.  

Yona did not return messages from the Crusader by press time Wednesday for the print edition.  

In its heyday, Griffin Funeral Home was an icon in Black Chicago. Its roots date back to 1933, when it operated as Bell Funeral Home and Auto Company at 3215 S. Michigan Ave.  

When Ernest A. Griffin took over the business from his father, Stephen A. Griffin, he and his wife Alyce wanted to take out a business loan to move the business to its current location but were rejected 33 times. They kept the rejection letters and later donated them to the Newberry Library on the North Side. 

In 1947, the Griffins moved the funeral home to its site on Martin Luther King Drive and renamed it Griffin Funeral Home.  

The Griffins lived above the funeral home. According to a Chicago Defender article in 2007, the Griffins’ daughter Dawn said, “In the 1940s, if a baby or child died, Daddy would prepare the body in a crib or a child’s bed with toys around it and the shoes next to it. He wanted the mother to remember seeing her baby in a crib sleeping, as opposed to seeing her baby in a casket. 

“The last memory of seeing her baby was what he wanted. He would position the baby in the crib with its hand resting on the face, just like the baby normally would sleep.” 

Dawn, in the article, said the only time the family was to see the casket was when it was taken out of the vehicle at the cemetery. 

Delivering impeccable service, the funeral home handled services for many prominent Black celebrities, including Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, Olympian Jesse Owens, Congressman William Dawson, and Robert Lawrence, Jr., the first Black U.S. astronaut. Griffin also handled the funeral services for pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, once married to jazz legend Louis Armstrong. 

A Civil War history buff, Griffin discovered that his grandfather, Charles Griffin, had served in the Union Army’s 29th Colored Regiment Company B and trained at Camp Douglas, a disease-ridden prisoner camp for Confederate soldiers that was located on the site of the funeral home.  

In 1990, Griffin erected a Heritage Memorial Wall that included a glass case displaying Civil War documents and memorabilia, a fountain pool, and a plaque. He began flying a Confederate flag at half-mast to remember those who died there at Camp Douglas, but the flag was always torn down, according to reports.  

Griffin died in 1995; his service was held at his funeral home. His wife Alyce, and daughters Dawn and Pearl continued operating the funeral home until it closed, along with the war memorial, in 2007. The war memorial was removed. Alyce died in 2017.    

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