This Month in Rochester History

Pixley Funeral Home as it looked in 1964

The new Pixley Funeral Home building was unveiled to the public fifty years ago this month.  Over the weekend of November 7-8, 1964, local residents were invited to an open house to view the new Georgian-style funeral home building that had been under construction for fifteen months.  The new facility featured a chapel and five reposing rooms, and was a big expansion for the business, which had been formerly located in a converted house.

Although the building was new in 1964, the Pixley Funeral Home business had long roots in Rochester.  At the turn of the twentieth century, the firm of Edward A. Tuttle & William M. Sullivan operated an undertaking business on Main Street in Rochester.  William Sullivan left the partnership to start his own funeral business in Royal Oak, which continues to this day as the William Sullivan & Son Funeral Home in Royal Oak and Utica.  Tuttle then took as his partner Thomas E. Nichols, and Nichols eventually bought him out.  In 1920, Vern Pixley - a descendant of one of Rochester's pioneer settlers -  bought an interest in the firm, which was then known as the Nichols-Pixley Funeral Home. In 1953, after the death of Nichols, the business became known as the Pixley Funeral Home.