Elizabeth's Chop House (formerly Former Shamrock Bar)

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 Chop House. The restaurant is now in new hands: Chef Tom Wahlstrom, who opened it, has stepped back, and Sean Hennessy has taken over. The building remains part of Marquette's downtown historic streetscape on Front Street.