Pittsburgh Cemeteries

The Art and Architecture of Death

This statue of a wreath-bearing mourner looks more contemplative as she weathers into abstraction.

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.

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.

A huge and opulent Ionic mausoleum crowned by a cupola on which stands a figure of Hope shaking her fist at heaven. At least that is how it has always looked to old Pa Pitt. The Schreiners must have had quite a lot of money, but they have left few other obvious historical traces of themselves.

There is nothing else remotely like this in Pittsburgh. This huge mausoleum supports a towering shaft with a recording angel at the top taking notes. It was designed by Theophilus P. Chandler Jr. (which always sounds to old Pa Pitt like the name of the villain in a Marx Brothers farce), the tastemaker of Philadelphia, and the architect of First Presbyterian Church downtown.

A good stock Pietà marks the grave of a soldier who died just a month and a half before the end of the First World War. The rustic stone with scroll that serves as a base does not match very well, and may have ben a replacement after the monument was damaged.

LOUIS FOSTER DIED SEPT. 29, 1918.
CO. M. 319 INF. A. E. F.

Louis Knoepp died in 1895 at the age of 40, and either he had already made enough of a fortune that this expense seemed appropriate to his heirs, or he came from a family with plenty of money already. The amateurish allegorical wreath-bearing statue on top suggests a client with more money than taste, but if the message to be delivered was that Louis Knoepp was the richest man in the cemetery, then the message has been delivered. Old Pa Pitt suspects that this monument was chosen from a monument dealer’s illustrated catalogue, forcing the monument dealer to come up with a monument he had never actually expected to have to build for anyone.

A striking monument from about 1879 (when the first Glockner in this plot died), with the slightly chunky-looking details typical of the era.

Both the mausoleum and the statue on top are identical to the Braun mausoleum in the South Side Cemetery, suggesting that the mausoleum and statue came as a set. This one is missing its bronze doors.

The mausoleum and statue are both stock items, but good ones, although the mausoleum does give the impression of having been assembled from a kit of mass-produced parts.