Pittsburgh Cemeteries

The Art and Architecture of Death

A typical marble obelisk of the Civil War era. The inscriptions are eroded into near illegibility, but one legible death date is 1840. Since the cemetery is not that old, the monument was probably put up in the 1860s, and previously deceased family members were honored on it then.

The monument is eroding and the inscription has become illegible, as is the common fate of expensive marble monuments from the middle 1800s. We must admit, though, that the effect of the decay is very picturesque.

This is almost certainly a marble pedestal for a large urn, now missing. By the style it looks as though this monument dates from about the time Katharina Wilbert died in 1875, which is a quarter-century before the foundation of the cemetery; so old Pa Pitt suspects it was moved here from another site. German inscriptions, common elsewhere, are unusual in the upper-middle-class Mount Lebanon Cemetery.

KATHARINA F.
WILBERT
NÉE HAAS
BORN APRIL 15, 1832
DIED SEPTEMBER 24, 1875