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Last Rites for a Funeral Home

Published: June 11, 2012

Central Library says goodbye to its original neighbor to the south.

Demolition of the Arlington Funeral Home, a landmark in Virginia Square since 1956 (5 years before Central opened), began last week in preparation for nine story mixed use commercial building. When completed, the new building will include a multi-use performance space known as a black box theater.

That’s probably a fitting legacy.

As theology professor Thomas Long explained in a 2009 New York Times essay, funerals are “a form of community theater in which we enact publicly the journey from here to there, thereby enabling both the dead and the living to process the reality and meaning of mortality.”

So long neighbor…

 

The history of the Arlington Funeral Home:

June 11, 2012 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Tagged With: local history news

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Anita Gill says

    June 16, 2012 at 7:36 PM

    I grew up when Arlington Funeral Home was a fixture. Many years ago. Arlington was a small towm (mostly residential) when I came to live there. I miss the “old” Arlington but know that times change and we need to keep up with them.

Trackbacks

  1. Morning Notes | ARLnow.com says:
    June 12, 2012 at 8:45 AM

    […] Arlington Funeral Home Demolition — Arlington Funeral Home in Virginia Square has been torn down to make way for a new office building. Arlington funeral home first opened in April 1956. [Arlington Public Library] […]

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