Columbia Standard

Expansion of Leevy's Funeral Home is generating a lot of excitement, City Councilman Ed McDowell Jr. said in a recent local news story.

McDowell's district includes the historic Waverly neighborhood where the nearly 90-year-old funeral home is located on Taylor Street.

"Leevy’s Funeral Home has been one of the historical landmarks within the city of Columbia," McDowell said in a July 23 The Post and Courier story about the expansion. "Folks are genuinely excited about the expansion. I think it gives this community a real opportunity and it also gives them a real appreciation for the services rendered by Leevy's."

The expansion, which will include an additional 5,000-square-feet to accommodate the growing business that employs 12 full-time and 60 part-time workers, will take about nine months to complete, according to The Post and Courier. 

The additional space will house three new viewing suites, a preparation and dressing room, renovated administrative offices, a hearse garage and three arrangement offices.

"When people see you're building and expanding they know that you're serving," Leevy’s Funeral Home President and Managing Director the Rev. Chris Leevy Johnson told The Post and Courier. "We're not resting on our laurels."

Leevy's has endured since the Great Depression, when Kershaw County natives I. S. and Mary Leevy opened an Esso Gas Station and then a funeral home, according to the funeral home's website. The funeral home has since been a solid fixture at Taylor and Gregg streets, almost a mile northeast of the statehouse.

Today, the funeral home, whose symbol is the yellow rose of friendship, offers a wide variety of services, including pre-planning and grief counseling.

The funeral home also is well known for its "Leevy Green Fleet," dozens of smart, jet-black, "luxurious and safe" vehicles that can accommodate large families or even private services. The fleet undergoes routine maintenance checks "to ensure no additional stress for grieving families," according to the the funeral home's website.

Leevy's serves more than 700 families each year and so this year has held 412 funerals, according to The Post and Courier news story.

"People remember who took care of their mother," Johnson told The Post and Courier. "You become a family's funeral home that you’ve served for generations."

Leevy's is on the South Carolina Department of Archives and History's Historic Properties Record list and has asked for national registry recognition.