This large cabinet card, on close inspection, seems more like a trade convention than a funeral procession. Nils Larson’s establishment doesn’t have quite the style of his white hearse or any of the other spiffy rides on this street.
You don’t suppose Chicago was having an Undertakers Appreciation Day, maybe a Take Your Friendly Neighborhood Mortician To Lunch sort of thing? Nah, probably just a convention.
The men in the middle of the picture are doing that Napoleon “hand inside the coat” pose – or maybe they are packing heat. This photo predates Prohibition and the crime syndicate heyday, but the driver of the hearse sure looks like he might be able to produce a few bodies himself if business got slow. Nah, I’m getting carried away.