Pittsburgh Cemeteries

The Art and Architecture of Death

St. Clair Cemetery

Originally a churchyard where early settlers were buried, and worth visiting for their locally cut stones. Later it expanded (though it is still quite small) into something of a proper nineteenth-century cemetery, with family burial plots and elegant monuments.


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This is a fine piece of work in the engraved-title-page style of the 1850s, but cut in the native stone (sandstone, Father Pitt believes, but he is happy to be corrected by someone better informed on the subject of rocks) that by this time had almost been abandoned in favor of limestone and marble. If it remains intact, the native stone preserves an inscription indefinitely, so that we can appreciate every flourish wrought by this talented artist.