On March 4, 1874, Jacob Schoen and Henry Frantz started a family business at 155 N. Peters Street, and adopted as their policy the ideal, “The highest standard funeral of service to all, regardless of financial circumstance.”
Thus recorded the founding of what was to become Jacob Schoen & Son, Inc., a family of Funeral Directors that has served the New Orleans area families for six generations, and whose facilities have grown to serve the families of New Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and St. Tammany Parishes. The business outgrew the original N. Peters Street funeral parlor, situated between Montegut and Clouet, and in 1879, the firm moved to 527 Elysian Fields. Other homes opened in Covington, (the Schoen & Molloy Funeral Home in 1915) and in Slidell (the Schoen Funeral Home of Slidell in 1963).
In 1935, the Schoen family acquired the beautifully landscaped and architecturally stunning Canal Street mansion, a New Orleans landmark, and converted it to a funeral home but without any of the typical preparation areas to keep the building intact. It is considered to be among the most beautiful funeral homes in the United States. It is the same building it occupies today.