Pittsburgh Cemeteries

The Art and Architecture of Death

Lina B. Nickel mourner

A family plot of matching graves that is missing one important tenant, or at least the inscription for him.

Nickel family plot

Lina B. Nickel

Lina B. Nickel, who died in 1916 at the age of 29 or 30, is buried here under an inscription identifying her as “MY WIFE.” But the matching headstone is blank, suggesting that Mr. Nickel (whose name was almost certainly William; see below) is not buried here. A husband in mourning might think that of course he would never marry again and would be buried next to his late wife when he died, but a year or two or five go by, and he begins to take a more realistic view of the rest of his life. Or it is quite possible that the whole matching set was ordered when the two sons died in 1912.

Mourner

A standard flower-dropping mourner. The wrists are always a weak point in this design.

William and John Nickel

Two young sons, William Jr. and John, died in 1912, very probably of the same childhood disease. From the name William Jr. we can deduce the father’s name.

Angel

This angel might also have been dropping flowers, as we can guess from its downward gaze and the eroded bouquet.

Face and wings

Sutmeyer mausoleum

A small stock mausoleum with indeterminate medievalish details. The cross-bearing angel on top has weathered into picturesque abstraction, looking far more otherworldly now than it did when it was new.

Angel on the Sutmeyer mausoleum

Katherine Litwin

A monument for a girl who died at the age of fourteen. The weathered and damaged angel is probably much more picturesque in this condition than it was when it was new.

Katherine Litwin

The base includes a photograph that is badly faded, but with the help of modern image-editing software we can restore a recognizable image.

Photograph of Katherine Litwin

A weathered and damaged angel that is all the more picturesque for the damage. The right hand was probably strewing flowers when the statue was intact.

This angel is the guardian of the cemetery, taking careful notes about who has been stealing bronze doors from mausoleums. You have been warned.

A row of Haxes and McCulloughs rests in front of this angel under identical slabs. C. C. Hax died in 1927, and this monument was put up in 1928 (according to the cemetery’s Web site). The Haxes made their money in leather goods and the McCulloughs in electric equipment, so this was what you would call a mixed marriage.

A young and slightly bored-looking angel holds a banner with the words “In Memoriam.” It is an unusually good piece of sculpture. The monument may have been put up in 1911, when Ida May Haudenshield died.

A rustic stone cross with a very good flower-dropping angel standing on a rock, and the family name spelled out in twigs on the base. It probably dates from about 1905, when John Yunker was buried here.

As Father Pitt has mentioned earlier, Ridgelawn Cemetery preserves its stone-fenced family plots, once a feature of every “rural” cemetery, more perfectly than any other cemetery in the area. Here we have a typical plot, except for its unusual shape: a main monument in the rear center is surrounded by various smaller monuments for individual members of the family, and the stone wall breaks for an entrance inscribed with the name of the patriarch of the family.

A marble recording angel whose businesslike attitude suggests to Father Pitt that she is checking boxes on a printed form. There are no inscriptions on the monument and no Bayer grave markers near it, so Father Pitt cannot date it except to say that it looks like the sort of thing that would have been put up in the beginning of the twentieth century. It is even possible that the plot was never used; we have seen examples of families that bought cemetery plots and put up monuments to themselves, and then moved elsewhere.