Salon replacing Gaskins
A Harrisburg landmark will take its last breath to make way for a Salon and Spa.
The Gaskins Funeral Home building located on W. Poplar Street opened in 1915 under the supervision of Bert Gaskins Sr. and his wife, Cozie. This week the building that has been on sale for several years was purchased and is scheduled to be tore down by Kerry Boatright Construction on Thursday to make way for the new business.
"I never thought I would be a part of tearing down Gaskins," said Tammy Segler, owner of Rapunzel's Hair Salon. "But we are excited to be a part of Harrisburg's growth."
The funeral home has been a huge part of the history in Harrisburg and the building's removal seems bittersweet. Gaskins was the first funeral home in Southern Illinois to own a motor driven hearse. The Gaskins family also purchased and started what is now Sunset Lawn Cemetery, modeled after Arlington Cemetery in honor of our fallen WWII veterans.
The funeral home is not without its dark past. In 2009, sentencing was passed on funeral director John B. Jones, who purchased the business from the Gaskins Family several years prior to its closing. Jones received three years in the Illinois Department of Corrections on five counts of failure to deposit funds into a trust account and six counts of theft.
Segler and her husband, Scott, purchased the building Monday and weighed the cost of restoring the historic building. But the funeral home is riddled with black mold and would cost close to $22,000 to remove, without a guarantee that it will not return.
The building sold for about $35,000, which is $65,000 lower than the original asking price of $99,000.
Though the building will be tore down, Segler plans on keeping the stone in the front of the building to reuse it in the new building construction.
"We are trying to reuse as much as possible," Segler said.
The new building will have an exposed wood beam and stone front with a copper tin like roof. The broken and sunken-in parking lot will be replaced with a flowerbed and shrubbery. Segler's business will open in March 2016 and include tanning, sauna and full salon services.