Pittsburgh Cemeteries

The Art and Architecture of Death

West Liberty Cemetery

Also known as the Beechview German Cemetery, the German Cemetery, the First German Evangelical Protestant Cemetery, or the Grandview Church of God cemetery. This old German cemetery belonged to a church on Mount Washington. It was neglected for years, but now is actively accepting burials again. Nevertheless, although some effort has been put into cleaning it up, there are still a couple of arms of the cemetery that reach back into the encroaching woods, with stones reclaimed by the jungle.


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This monument is eroding into illegibility, but as of now it is still possible to read the inscription if we catch it in a certain light:

FRED. W. HARTUNG.
DIED JAN. 111, 1903.
AGED 27 YRS.

AT REST.

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.