The Art and Architecture of Death
A pleasant rural landscape in the urban part of Mount Lebanon, with a few memorable monuments.
A modest rustic mausoleum with almost no ornamentation, but it nevertheless manages to look picturesque against its green hillside.
The weathered face of this mourner looks all the more contemplative for the eroded vagueness of her features. The names of the various Pottses are inscribed on a broken column, a common metaphor for death in cemeteries. The various parts of the monument seem to have been ordered separately and with little regard for consistent style; we know from seeing her in other cemeteries that the flower-strewing mourner (whose hands always break off) was a standard catalogue item, and the classical column seems an odd match for the rustic base.
We have featured this mausoleum before, but surrounded by the splendor of fresh June greenery it makes a very attractive picture.
A substantial classical monument that may date from 1933, when Jacob Minsinger was buried (under a separate ledger); but the style suggests that it could be older, and might have been bought while Jacob was alive in anticipation of the eventual need for it.
A tasteful obelisk with a simple classical base. The stark Gothic letters of the inscription are typical of the era.
A winter view of this charming vernacular-Gothic house that serves as the office for the cemetery.
The Soffels always decorate their mausoleum in Mount Lebanon Cemetery with a wreath for Christmas.
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 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.