A compact red-brick building in the form of a classical temple, its pedimented gable fronts trimmed with dentil courses and crowned by terra-cotta antefixae of palmette and scroll. A wide round arch of molded brick and stone frames the entrance, filled above the doors with a fan of blue leaded glass; smaller round-arched windows, some grouped in threes on slender colonnettes, give the design its Romanesque cast. MISSOURI CREMATORY is lettered on a stone panel in the front gable. A tall brick chimney rises at the rear, and a lower wing carrying white terra-cotta console brackets extends to one side above a rock-faced stone base.
The Missouri Crematory Association, organized in 1885, built the crematory in 1888 to a design by the architect Otto J. Wilhelmi. It was the first crematory in Missouri and among the earliest in the United States. The association ran it until 1928, after which Valhalla Cemetery held the property. It continues in use today as Valhalla's Hillcrest Abbey, where aqua cremation was introduced in 2024; a caretaker's house on the grounds was demolished in 2017.
