Tech Center Students Help Bring New Life to Old Funeral Home

The historic mansion that once housed a funeral home is about to come back to life with a little help from students in Wenatchee Valley Tech’s (WVT) Construction Trades program. The 111-year-old Conrad Rose mansion, once home to Jones & Jones Funeral Home, has stood empty since 2007. The new owners, sister companies Firefly and Legwork, are breathing new life into the 23,000-square-foot building by renovating the interior to include office space for their tech companies and upscale apartments. 

The building, based on Georgian-style architecture, is currently listed on the Wenatchee Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1906 by local fruit baron Conrad Rose and bought by Jones & Jones in 1924. WVT students will assist contractors with reconstructing exterior dentil trim and cornice work to match the original pieces and will carefully dismantle and preserve some of the old-growth pine beams in the interior.

“It’s not every day you get your hands on a project like this,” said WVT construction trades teacher Terry Fike. “Personally, I get ex cited about the chance for my students to be part of revealing the history that is hidden behind the walls of this building and the ability to bring new life into a historic Wenatchee landmark,” he exclaimed.

The first step for the class was a tour of the building with project consultant Bryan Visscher. On a cold fall afternoon, the students explored the building’s architecture inside and out using headlamps and cell phone flashlights, along the way getting a history lesson from Visscher on the building and construction materials of the time.

Visscher reached out to Fike to see if his students would be interested in the project. Having worked with school districts for most of his career in facilities management — including serving as the Wenatchee School District’s former director of facilities and risk management — Visscher couldn’t resist the chance to make this a project-based learning experience. “This [the building] represents impressive construction for the time — there’s a tremendous amount of learning here,” he said about the renovation of the building. Features like a widow's walk and a bridge-type truss system are architectural features rarely seen in today’s construction practices.

As the group walked through the stripped-down interior, only the framing and remnants of the former funeral home remained. “Look closely at these exposed beams — they are all old-growth pine,” Fike told the students. “You guys can’t just go to Lowe’s and buy this stuff. You can’t even find it in the forest,” he explained.

The creepiness of the old building was thrilling for the students, but so was the ability to see the craftsmanship and hard work of those that had come before them. The embalming room, crypts, and chapel intrigued the students, while the unique construction aspect captivated them. “This really makes me appreciate those who used hand tools to build these amazing structures,” said senior Chad Simpson. “Nowadays, we are so accustomed to power tools that we don’t fully appreciate how much work went into construction in the old days,” he remarked.

Back at the Tech Center shop, Fikes’s students have been hard at work reproducing the removed pieces of exterior trim, dentil and cornice. The students are learning by deconstructing the trim pieces and then reconstructing them again. “There is a lot of trial and error involved in this process, and it takes time to get it just historically right,” said Visscher. Once complete, the new pieces will be installed and painted to match the existing trim. Only a sharp-eyed passerby will know the difference, he said. “I can’t wait to see how it turns out.”