The Art and Architecture of Death
Doubtless a memorial company’s stock model, this small mausoleum is encrusted with floridly Victorian Romanesque details in a rather weighty German style. A good architect would have displayed more taste, but would a real architect have been able to provide so many details for the money?
Almost certainly modeled after the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, this is about as archaeologically correct as Doric architecture gets in Pittsburgh. It is one of the few peripteral mausoleum designs you will find in Pittsburgh cemeteries, peripteral meaning that it has columns on all sides.
An attractive modernist mausoleum, probably from after the Second World War, that combines simplicity of form with enough (simplified) decorative detail to avoid monotony. The stained glass inside is pretty, if not particularly inspired.
A modest rustic mausoleum with almost no ornamentation, but it nevertheless manages to look picturesque against its green hillside.
We have featured this mausoleum before, but surrounded by the splendor of fresh June greenery it makes a very attractive picture.
The Soffels always decorate their mausoleum in Mount Lebanon Cemetery with a wreath for Christmas.
A typical Doric mausoleum made exceptional by its picturesque setting on a hill.
A large Doric temple near the entrance to the cemetery. It is very much a gentleman’s mausoleum: it is most distinguished by its lack of distinguishing features, concentrating instead on getting every detail of the style perfectly correct.
A small Doric mausoleum distinguished by its arched doorway, rare in Doric mausoleums in Pittsburgh. (Old Pa Pitt has a backlog of cemetery pictures with fall colors, so don’t be surprised to see more of them this winter.)
Golden winter sun illuminates the Sunshine mausoleum in the South Side Cemetery.
