Pittsburgh Cemeteries

The Art and Architecture of Death

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 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.

Art Deco was popular only for a few decades in the early and middle twentieth century, and it never became a very popular style for cemetery monuments. But among the wealthy residents of the Homewood Cemetery, a restrained and tasteful Art Deco was quite fashionable in the years from roughly 1930 to 1950. In many cases it takes the form of a streamlining and radical simplification of classical and Gothic styles. Some of these monuments look like pieces of sets from the world’s most somber RKO musical.