Three Parlors
By Kris DayVincent

What do funerals, ice cream, and pizza all have in common? The answer is they all preside in parlors. Before its demise in 1978, the white wooden building in the very center of this photograph served as all three, a funeral parlor, an ice cream parlor, and a pizza parlor
Known early on as the Harpst Building, it was located approximately where Friday Harbor Trading Company is now. Elias Fritz Harpst, town undertaker, watchmaker, and jeweler moved his business to the building in 1910. An enterprising man, he had been the Postmaster earlier and he ran a passenger vessel named the “Jewel” back and forth to the mainland.
He stayed in the undertaking business until 1925 when Harry King went into the partnership with him. Five months later, King took over the business and moved it up Spring Street to the building were Osito’s was located.
After Harpst was there, other businesses occupied the building. One such business was “Sweet Pea Dairy,” which sold ice cream. Tony Surina was a friend of owner Ed Ringler’s son and has many happy memories of eating ice cream cones there.
The Harpst building was later occupied by a string of businesses
including a shoe store, then “Lucky Cleaners” and later, “Reliable Cleaners.” In the seventies “Rusty” Russell purchased the building and opened a pizza parlor. He then moved the old building to the corner of Argyle Street and Pear Point Road. In the middle of the night in May 1978, the building came to an end in a fiery blaze that was deemed “suspicious.” Thus ended the days of the Harpst Building.