Pittsburgh Cemeteries

The Art and Architecture of Death

Union Dale Cemetery

The premier address for the deceased of Allegheny City, the Union Dale Cemetery is picturesquely hilly and filled with distinguished monuments and mausoleums.


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Shanor column

An odd mixture of styles: the base is a sort of medieval-classical fantasy, from which sprouts a column with an Egyptian-style lotus capital, and on that stands an allegorical figure of Hope.

Hope

Duncan mausoleum

From any angle the Duncan mausoleum is impressive. There is nothing like it anywhere else in Pittsburgh—or, as far as old Pa Pitt knows, in the world. The architect was Theophilus P. Chandler Jr., the Philadelphia tastemaker who also designed First Presbyterian downtown and Third Presbyterian at Fifth and Negley in Shadyside. He seems to have been proud of this mausoleum: if you go looking for it on line, you will turn up Father Pitt’s pictures (of course), and then a large number of prints and postcards from the time the mausoleum was built.

Statue on the Kelley monument

Flower-dropping mourners are very common in our cemeteries, but this one is made of bronze and unusually fine.

Kelley monument

Andrews mausoleum

A richly detailed example of Renaissance classicism, with rusticated blocks, arched entrance, “modern Ionic” columns (that is, Ionic columns with volutes at the four corners of the capitals), and flanking urns.

McKee shaft

A tall shaft topped by an urn. The very Victorian design includes elaborate monograms and ample space for inscriptions, but no inscriptions were ever engraved. Instead, the McKees have individual headstones around the monument. Eleanor McKee died in 1877, and that may be the date of the monument as well; but from the style old Pa Pitt might guess that it is later, perhaps from 1892, when Eleanor’s husband John, the family patriarch, was buried. They had two children who died before either of them. All the McKees were buried with sentimentally illiterate rhymed epitaphs. The worst is for Samuel Sterrett McKee, who was born in 1861 and died in 1868:

CEASE DEAR PARENTS CEASE THY WEEPING
O’RE THE GRAVE WHERE I AM SLEEPING
FOR E’RE I LEFT MY HOME BELOW,
THE ANGELS WERE BECKONING ME TO GO.

Father Pitt counts two bad spellings and one grammatical error; he has given up the punctuation for lost.

Urn

Schreiner mausoleum

A large and luxurious classical structure with a prominent cupola topped by a statue of Hope shaking her fist at heaven. At least that is how old Pa Pitt always reads the statue: it is certainly Hope (the anchor is her ID card), and Father Pitt doesn’t know what else to make of the raised-fist salute.

Statue of Hope

Monogram

Ornate monograms flank the entrance arch.

Annie F. Wood monument

A good example of the romantic style of the middle 1800s, which—as we can see here—lasted into the 1870s. These monuments were usually in marble or limestone, which erodes far too quickly in our climate—although it is often beautifully picturesque in its eroded state. This is Father Pitt’s best attempt at reading the inscription:

ANNIE F. WOOD,
WIFE OF
ROBERT J. GRIER
DIED MARCH 8, 1873
IN THE 32 YEAR OF HER
AGE.

We are fairly certain of the name “Annie F. Wood,” but almost all the other readings are subject to amendment.

There was also an epitaph in a kind of cartouche below the inscription, but it seems hopeless to try to interpret it now.

Inscription

Robert Carson mausoleum

A simplified Doric mausoleum without entablature or any of the usual fiddly bits. It dates from 1885, but one could be forgiven for supposing it a twentieth-century modernist’s interpretation of classical style.

Sutton monument

This glorious creation is what happens when monument makers design monuments the way illustrators imagine them: a very romantic interpretation of classical forms, including stylized Ionic capitals, swags, a shrouded urn, and classical foliage. Unfortunately the inscriptions have eroded into illegibility, but in certain lights some of the burial dates seem to be from the 1860s.

The variation in colors is mostly the result of using two different cameras.