The Art and Architecture of Death
There is nothing else remotely like this in Pittsburgh. This huge mausoleum supports a towering shaft with a recording angel at the top taking notes. It was designed by Theophilus P. Chandler Jr. (which always sounds to old Pa Pitt like the name of the villain in a Marx Brothers farce), the tastemaker of Philadelphia, and the architect of First Presbyterian Church downtown.
A typical shrouded-urn shaft, this is actually one of the most expensive and elaborate monuments in this cemetery, which did not serve a wealthy congregation. It was good value for money, because its four faces (one is still blank) provided generous space for inscriptions, making further expense on individual grave markers unnecessary.
It appears that the Beckers had six children, five of whom died in childhood—three within two weeks in 1873, doubtless of the same disease. Mathilda, born in 1874, has a space left for a date of death, but it has never been filled in. Father Pitt chooses to interpret that as meaning that she lived a long and happy life and was eventually buried with her many loved ones somewhere else.
A monument that probably marks the resting place of one of the pastors of the Mount Washington church to which this cemetery belonged, along with his wife and a brother-in-law. Although some monuments of the same period in this cemetery are in German, the English on this monument suggests that the Mount Washington congregation (unlike many German churches in other neighborhoods) was English-speaking by the turn of the twentieth century.
A good stock Pietà marks the grave of a soldier who died just a month and a half before the end of the First World War. The rustic stone with scroll that serves as a base does not match very well, and may have ben a replacement after the monument was damaged.
Two of these mass-produced iron crucifixes from the 1880s can be found in St. Peter’s Cemetery [Correction: After another walk through the cemetery, we have found at least four]. Their weakness as monuments is that the individualized letters fall off, though “Hier ruhet” is molded in the metal and perfectly legible. Fortunately there are other Amrheins buried in the same plot with legible stone monuments, so we can be confident that the letters AMR---I- represent AMRHEIN. The first name (-ACK-B) is probably Jackob. The birth and death dates are also illegible, though we can make out the decade of death as 188-.
The epitaph is perfectly legible, because it is cut in a stone base:
Ruhe sanft in deiner Gruft
bis dich Jesus wieder ruft.
Rest softly in your grave
till Jesus calls you again.
Simple modernist elegance enlivened by bronze doors and decorative etching around the doorframe.