Written by The Bold Italic
On the same day Steven Welch got his driver’s license, he drove to pick up a body for his family’s funeral home, Duggan’s Funeral Service on 17th Street. He was 17.
More than 40 years later, he’s the mainstay of the multigenerational business. A lot has changed since those days; cremations outnumber direct burials nationwide, and people no longer want multi-day visitations, he says. Now, “they want it short and convenient.”
More than a dozen funeral homes lined Valencia Street for much of the 20th Century. Back then, funeral streetcars and a local railway ferried the dead and their mourners to cemeteries in Colma. Now, just two remain: Duggan’s Funeral Service, which moved from 1234 Valencia St. to 3434 17th St. in 1932, and Driscoll’s Valencia Street Serra Mortuary, near Cesar Chavez St.
With all the changes on Valencia in recent decades — restaurants, high-end shops, bike lanes, double-parked Ubers — Welch says that moving off of Valencia is one reason Duggan’s is still going.
“Where, on Valencia, would you put a hearse?” he asks, baffled.
Inside Duggan’s, the atmosphere is solemn and quiet; the traffic and bustle of Valencia Street seems miles away. Rooms are meticulously arranged for the next viewing or funeral, one chapel holds rows of empty pews and a podium where someone’s urn will be placed. Each chapel has doors to seal off the room, giving mourners space and privacy to grieve.
