McDermott-Crockett & Associates Mortuary

McDermott-Crockett & Associates Mortuary was established in 1906 by Charles Stephen McDermott and his wife, Hanora "Nora" Frances Hildegarde O'Leary, who relocated from Chicago. It stands as Santa Barbara's oldest continuously operating funeral home. Thomas Joseph McDermott, born in Santa Barbara in 1915 and a graduate of the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science, carried the practice into its second generation alongside his wife Louise, who served as the mortuary organist. Following Thomas McDermott's death in September 1969, Richard Crockett assumed leadership, and the business formally adopted its current hyphenated name in 1967. Over its history, McDermott-Crockett has absorbed historical funeral records from several earlier Santa Barbara providers and has maintained a partnership with the Central Coast Memorial Society since 1974. The mortuary operates from a historic chapel originally designed and built in 1875 by architect Peter Barber for St. Mark's Episcopal Church, which survived the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake intact and was relocated to its current Chapala Street location in 1932 by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The chapel was designated an official City Landmark in 1982 as a rare example of Gothic Revival architecture.