Pittsburgh Cemeteries

The Art and Architecture of Death

An antebellum burial vault, built in 1858 in a restrained classical style. It looks wonderfully ancient and mysterious when you happen on it back in this woodsy section of the cemetery.

In-ground burial vaults like this had gone out of fashion in most of our cemeteries by the late nineteenth century, but there are two later ones in the Highwood Cemetery. This one, with its rustic stone, is indescribably picturesque and looks like a relic of some vanished ancient culture, but it probably dates from about 1880.