Midtown lost a landmark last
week. The 129-year-old funeral home W.F. Gormley & Sons took down
its iconic neon sign — one of the oldest remaining on the grid —
Aug. 18 in preparation for its move to Land Park. The sign,
a stylized maroon scroll emblazoned with the name of the business
and the all-important words “Parking Area,” had been in place for
nearly a century.

A crane helps lower the scroll-shaped sign from its posts. (Photo
by Francisco Chavira)

Managing Editor Dakota Morlan
wrote a profile of the funeral home for
Comstock’s 2024 Family Business issue. W.F. Gormley was founded in 1897 by William
Francis Gormley, then coroner and sheriff of the city, in “an
imposing stone structure that had a livery and stable for a
horse-drawn hearse,” Dakota wrote. It has been in its current
Midtown location since 1924, and the sign was installed in the
1930s,
PBS KVIE reports. The
nonprofit Sacramento Modern also associates it with work done
by the local company Ledbetter in the 1950s. 

Now in its fifth generation of
family ownership, W.F. Gormley & Sons has helped countless
families celebrate the lives of their loved ones, both at the
funeral home and at churches and other locations around the
region. While it accommodates all faiths, it has a notable
stronghold in Sacramento’s Catholic community and even played a
role in the beatification process of a local venerable (two steps
below canonization in the Catholic Church’s sainthood process):
the late Sacramento Auxiliary Bishop Alphonse Gallegos, killed by
a car in 1991. As part of his bid for sainthood, the Gormleys
took charge of the exhumation, verification and reinterment of
his remains in 2010, earning the business a papal
blessing.

The sign is lowered to the ground. (Photo by Francisco Chavira)

For many Sacramentans, however,
W.F. Gormley & Sons’ neon sign is less associated with death than
with beginnings. With its placement on Capitol Avenue between
20th and 21st streets, it served as a kind of welcome mat for the
liveliest part of Midtown, flanked by the legendary clubs of
Lavender Heights. Its yellow glass tubes came alive every night
in tandem with the neighborhood.

My usual bicycle route to Midtown
from my home in Curtis Park — within the glow of another iconic
neon sign, Gunther’s Jugglin’ Joe — took me invariably past W.F.
Gormley & Sons. On a bicycle the Sacramento grid can feel like a
medieval walled city, bordered by nearly impregnable layers of
elevated freeways and moatlike stroads. When I reached the
Gormley scroll, I knew I had reached its core.

The sign is lowered onto a flatbed truck in preparation for its
move to the funeral home’s new location. (Photo by Francisco
Chavira)

The funeral home is not moving
far outside the grid — its new location is on Riverside Boulevard
in a building previously occupied by another
more-than-century-old funeral home, the George L. Klumpp Chapel
of Flowers. The sign and other decorative features from the
former location will be reinstalled there. The neon sign will
then overlook the Historic City Cemetery, arguably a more
appropriate backdrop than Sacramento’s nightlife district. It
will remain a fixture of the city, if no longer a Midtown
beacon.

But for me, the sign will remain
a waypost — Riverside happens to be my route to another favorite
grid neighborhood, Southside Park. I look forward to seeing it
come alight again.

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