Pittsburgh Cemeteries

The Art and Architecture of Death

The polished Doric columns seem almost out of place on this otherwise rustic mausoleum. The effect is like the effect of a mixed metaphor: it draws attention to itself, though you understand what it means.

If you want to be buried under a pyramid but don’t want to be ostentatious about it, this is your monument.

A very respectable between-the-wars mausoleum, with the flatter top that had become fashionable on classical mausoleums in the early twentieth century. This one is made of expensive polished granite.

A beautiful abstract classical memorial that reminds old Pa Pitt of middle-twentieth-century cartoons of heaven. The most recent inscription remembers Marian Becker Cummins, who died in 2017 at the age of 101.

The Carnahan family has been prominent in the near South Hills for a long time, and this plot, with its chunky rusticated monument, is lovingly maintained with a garden of ornamental grasses.

A massive chunk of Ionic classicism that certainly does its job of making the Henry family plot easy to find. The large volutes on top cleverly echo the Ionic volutes of the capitals of the columns. The monument probably dates from 1902, when John Henry was buried here. The individual tombstones look like children’s toy models of the main monument.

This is almost certainly a marble pedestal for a large urn, now missing. By the style it looks as though this monument dates from about the time Katharina Wilbert died in 1875, which is a quarter-century before the foundation of the cemetery; so old Pa Pitt suspects it was moved here from another site. German inscriptions, common elsewhere, are unusual in the upper-middle-class Mount Lebanon Cemetery.

KATHARINA F.
WILBERT
NÉE HAAS
BORN APRIL 15, 1832
DIED SEPTEMBER 24, 1875

Topped with an unusually abstract urn, this monument is very eclectic in its influence, with a sharp Gothic point and Greek-key ornaments. The abstract foliage tracery is a pleasing touch.

The last gasp of the Egyptian style, much simplified but unmistakable in its shape and of course in its winged sun disk. The concrete panel in front is well made, and its inscription nicely matched to the Egyptian style, but we can tell that it is later and replaced original bronze doors. In fact we can know exactly what those doors looked like, because this is a duplicate of the Oliver Mausoleum in the Highwood Cemetery, where the doors are still intact (or were when we took the picture). This one, however, includes a pair of appropriate lotus vases, which may never have been installed at the Oliver mausoleum.

A fairly modest but ornate zinc monument for a mother who died in her thirties.