On a frigid January day, there was unusual activity at a long-dormant red brick building on Sublette Avenue in St. Louis. Jon Hughes, a funeral home operator, watched a team of professional movers in coveralls as they maneuvered a one-ton steel tank off a flatbed truck and prepared to transfer it into the century-old building. Built in the 1880s and shuttered in the 1990s, the Missouri Crematory was coming alive again, so to speak.