1886 Marquette Furniture Store and Undertaking Parlor
113 South Front Street, Marquette, MI 49855
Age
Working downtown commercial property; current business hours apply.
Cost
Free
Exterior viewing is free. Interior dining at the current restaurant (Elizabeth's Chophouse, opened 2007) is at restaurant pricing.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved downtown sidewalk
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1886 · Nineteenth-century furniture-and-undertaking commercial typology · Marquette Front Street historic streetscape · Prohibition-era speakeasy tradition
The two-story brick commercial building at 113 South Front Street in Marquette was completed in 1886 as H. R. Oates Furniture and Undertaking. The pairing of a furniture store with an undertaking parlor was a common nineteenth-century arrangement throughout the Upper Peninsula: the same skilled woodworkers who built parlor furniture also built coffins, and embalming-and-mortuary services were often offered from the same storefront.
The cellar at 113 South Front Street served the undertaking side of the business. Morticians used the below-grade space for embalming and as winter storage for bodies that could not be buried because the Upper Peninsula ground was too deeply frozen to dig graves. According to local-history accounts published by 99WFMK and Marquette regional travel media, bodies in coffins were laid out in the cellar from late autumn through the spring thaw — a routine logistical practice for the time and climate. A separate local tradition holds that the basement also served as a Prohibition-era speakeasy during the 1920s.
The Oates furniture and undertaking business closed in the 1930s. The ground floor reopened in 1945 as the Shamrock Bar and operated under that name for several decades. The building was sold in 2007 and became Elizabeth's Chophouse, which continues to operate at the address. The building remains part of Marquette's downtown historic streetscape on Front Street.
Sources
The building's haunted reputation took shape during the Shamrock Bar years and has carried through to its current operation as Elizabeth's Chophouse. The most-circulated local story holds that during the Oates undertaking years a woman who was believed to be dead was placed in a coffin and left in the cellar overnight; when morticians returned the next morning, they discovered that she had revived and suffocated inside the closed coffin. The story does not appear in surviving Oates business records or Marquette County coroner registers in the published sourcing reviewed for this listing — it is published locally as a tradition.
Reported phenomena cluster around the cellar and the ground-floor service areas. Staff and visitors have described flickering lights, glasses and small objects moving on their own, doors closing without an apparent draft, the sound of an infant crying in unoccupied portions of the building, and a disembodied voice repeating 'I want out — let me out.' Apparitions are mentioned in regional travel and ghost-quest coverage but without consistent description across accounts.
The property does not formally market itself as a haunted attraction; the local-history coverage of the building is the principal vehicle for the stories' circulation.
The 1886 commercial building at 113 South Front Street is part of Marquette's downtown historic streetscape. Visitors can view the exterior facade and, during restaurant operating hours, dine at Elizabeth's Chophouse (the current tenant). The building's funeral-home past is documented in Marquette County Historical Society and 99WFMK regional reporting.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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