Celentano Funeral Home (John Richardson House)

Conspicuously embedded among a row of miniature Victorian houses, the Celentano Funeral Home (formerly the John Richardson House) asserts its prominent Greek Revival/Italianate style with a heavily corniced two-story portico supported by tall Doric columns. Built in 1844 as a residence for New Haven resident John Richardson, the building (which now includes the original house and a sizable addition) has served as the Celentano Funeral Home since 1934, and is still operated by the son and grandson of William C. Celentano, founder of the mortuary and former mayor of New Haven. 

Martin Parrott (dates unknown)

Joseph & Naomi Beecher (dates unknown)

Sidney Hull (dates unknown)

William Cutler (1836-1841)

John Richardson (1841-1894)

James Richardson (1894-1930)

Vacant (1930-1934)

Celentano Funeral Home (1934-Present) 

According to the title deeds of the White Brothers, Clark, Hall, and Peck in Yale University’s library of Manuscripts & Archives, the site of the John Richardson House had multiple successive owners (Martin Parrott, Joseph & Naomi Beecher, and Sidney Hull) before it was purchased by William Cutler in 1834 (16). Unfortunately, these records bear no mention of any prior structures or buildings that might have stood on the site. John Richardson purchased the plot from Cutler in 1841, three years prior to the construction of the house. The same records show that John Richardson also purchased the property next door (now home to 434-436 Elm St.) in 1858, though he would sell this property, along with a slice of his 424 Elm property exactly 14 feet in width, to a Sarah Wier in 1870. Coincidentally, both of these properties formerly owned by John Richardson are now under the ownership of Celentano, Inc., the company that oversees the Celentano Funeral Home.

The John Richardson property also underwent multiple changes of address during this era, as was a typical occurrence in such a rapidly growing city as 19th Century New Haven. City directories from this time list the property as No. 34 Samaritan Street from 1845-47, No. 34 Mapel Street from 1848-1864, No. 250 Elm Street from 1865-1882, and finally No. 424 Elm Street from 1883 until the present (9-12, 17). 

The building was commissioned in 1844 as a private residence for John Richardson, and ownership would remain in the Richardson family for nearly a century until 1930, having passed on to James Richardson upon his father’s death in 1894. City directories list the building as “vacant” from 1930-1934 as a result of the presumable death of James Richardson (9-12).

In 1934, the building was purchased by William C. Celentano, owner of the Celentano Funeral Home, which was at the time in operation next door at 434 Elm Street (11). Over the next year, Celentano would transition its operations from 434 Elm into 424 Elm, the John Richardson House. In order to accommodate operations as a funeral home, the house’s interior underwent a significant redesign, which included transforming living quarters into offices and enlarging interior doorways and arches (13). At this time, the building also underwent its drastic exterior remodel: flushboarded walls were stuccoed, cornices were trimmed, and the house’s elegant portico was inelegantly supersized (1). Although the 1934 redesign repurposed most of the residential areas of the home, it did preserve a second-floor residential apartment and kitchen, which for several decades housed Mr. and Mrs. Ralph and Josephine Marcarelli, longtime employees of the funeral home (14).

Since the building was rechristened as the Celentano Funeral Home in 1935, it has undergone multiple intervening additions, most notably the construction of an adjoining building in 1954, which more than doubled its floor space but which compromised the building’s Italianate symmetry and ornament (13). Other noteworthy additions include a 1940 porch to the building’s new entrance, a 1942 masonry garage, and a 1988 accessibility ramp (13). The funeral home remains to this day a family business; it is currently operated by William Celentano Jr. and Mark Celentano, the respective son and grandson of founder William C. Celentano, who started the company in 1924, and who would later serve as Mayor of New Haven from 1945-1953 (15). Memorabilia of William C. Celentano, including portraits and campaign posters, adorn the building’s interior as testament to the legacy he left as both a politician and a businessman. 

Situated at the corner of Elm and Dwight streets, the John Richardson House/Celentano Funeral Home occupies a kind of liminal space between two contrasting neighborhoods: the upscale Broadway shopping and dining district that serves Yale’s campus and the Dwight-Dixwell residential neighborhood, mere blocks from downtown but a world away in terms of socioeconomic status as well as the physical appearance of the streetscape. At the time of the Richardson House’s construction in the mid-19th Century, Dwight Street was a promising new residential development, worthy of some of the finest Victorian and Italianate homes of the area, though it was at the same time emerging as a center for New Haven’s local industries, like the New Haven Carriage Co. and the F. H. Russell Lumber Yard, both situated just a stone’s throw from the Richardson House (3-6).

Now, however, most of the fine Victorian houses along Dwight Street, and indeed further along Elm Street, have been subdivided into multi-family and apartment-style housing. Many of these buildings now display marked physical and aesthetic deterioration, evincing this neighborhood’s decline in socioeconomic status and maintenance over the past decades (7, 8).

The Dwight neighborhood has been the locus of multiple redevelopment efforts by the New Haven Redevelopment Agency, most notably between 1965-1967, during which time the Celentano Funeral Home itself underwent a $115,000 capital improvement project recognized by the New Haven Redevelopment Agency (7, 8). 

The original John Richardson House (prior to its 1934 overhaul) possessed a marked Italianate silhouette with a pastiche of Greek Revival detailing. Characteristic of other Italianate homes, the Richardson House featured a flat, rectangular roof with a heavy cornice around the perimeter, in addition to an array of corniced windows featuring small scroll brackets. The building’s Greek Revival character is expressed largely through the columned portico framing the building’s entrance, which at the time of construction rose only a single story above the porch.

Some architectural historians have speculated that the John Richardson House may have been designed by the prolific New Haven architect Henry Austin, noting the original structure’s marked resemblance to other contemporaneous Italianate homes, such as the James Dwight Dana House at 24 Hillhouse Avenue, built a year later in 1845 (1).

The building’s 1934 renovation, under the oversight of Celentano Inc., divested it of some of its Italianate flair, when the heavy cornice on the roof was significantly trimmed, and the house’s square footprint became distended by a large single-story addition, more vernacular in style. In contrast, the building’s Greek Revival elements were heavily accentuated, and some critics would say were blown out of proportion (1). The entrance’s columned portico was raised to the height of the roof, doubling the height of the supporting Greek Revival columns, and a two- dimensional decorative pediment was affixed to added building’s otherwise visually sparse façade. During the renovation, the building’s exterior was stuccoed and the portico’s columns, formerly of painted wood, were replaced with aluminum.

Today, the interior of the Richardson House still boasts several traces of the original 1844 home, including three original marble fireplaces in addition to the original curving staircase and balustrade. However, some of the spacious parlors of the home have been segmented into separate rooms by 2000s-era additions of interior walls. In sum, the building remains an homage to 19th Century Italianate and Greek Revival houses, though its initial architectural vision has been somewhat muddled by a mélange of renovations. 

1. Brown, Elizabeth Mills, New Haven, a Guide to Architecture and Urban Design. Yale University Press, 1976.
2. City of New Haven Online Assessment Database, 424 Elm Street Online Assessment, 2016.
3. Sanborn Map Company of New York, Insurance Maps of New Haven, Connecticut, Volume 2, 1886, 49.
4. Sanborn-Ferris Map Company of New York, Insurance Maps of New Haven, Connecticut, Volume 2, 1901, 152.
5. Sanborn Map Company of New York. Insurance Maps of New Haven, Connecticut, Volume 2, 1924, 201.
6. Sanborn Map Company of New York. Insurance Maps of New Haven, Connecticut, Volume 2, 1973, 201.
7. New Haven Redevelopment Agency, “New Haven Redevelopment Agency Annual Report: 1965,” (New Haven: City of New Haven, 1965).
8. New Haven Redevelopment Agency, “New Haven Redevelopment Agency Annual Report: 1967,” (New Haven: City of New Haven, 1967).
9. Benham, J. H. 1848 New Haven City Directory (New Haven: J. H. Benham, 1848).
10. Price & Lee Co., 1930 New Haven City Directory (New Haven: Price & Lee Co., 1930)
11. Price & Lee Co., 1934 New Haven City Directory (New Haven: Price & Lee Co., 1934)
12. Price & Lee Co., 1935 New Haven City Directory (New Haven: Price & Lee Co., 1935)
13. City of New Haven Building Department, Building Permits for 424 Elm Street. 1934- 1988.
14. New Haven Register, Obituary for Josephine L. Marcarelli, New Haven Register (New Haven, CT), Oct. 27, 2010.
15. New Haven Register, “Large Wing Added To Celentano Funeral Home,” New Haven Register (New Haven, CT), Jan. 30, 1955.
16. New York Times, “William Celentano, A New Haven Mayor,” New York Times (New York, NY), Nov. 15, 1972.
17. Clark, Hall, and Peck and White Brothers Records, New Haven Property Title Deeds, Series 1, Box 10, 1860-1982.
18. New Haven Museum, Dana Collection, Volume 19, Page 37.