A tasteful standard-model classical mausoleum, seen on an atmospherically misty morning. According to cemetery records, Wilhelmina S. Nickel was buried a few days after she died in 1928, so the mausoleum was probably put up for her while she was still alive.
Probably a stock design, but a pleasingly artistic one, representing a half-finished Romanesque arch carved out of a rustic boulder. The effect is appropriately romantic, as if the sculptor himself had been interrupted by death in the middle of creating his masterpiece.
A zinc or “white bronze” Gothic monument to Harriet Dunseath Ingold, mourned by her husband—but there is no indication that he was buried with her. Zinc was, according to the cemetery’s Web site, forbidden in the Allegheny Cemetery, but several plot owners managed to sneak in zinc monuments anyway. They are all still in good shape, with their inscriptions as legible as when they were installed—more than can be said for many of the much more expensive marble monuments nearby.
Because we have the catalogue, we know that this style of monument was the Monumental Bronze Company’s Design No. 122.
At first glance this mausoleum gives one the impression that it is nothing more than a big box of dead Snyders. But the tasteful details and fine proportions reward a longer look. It is plain with the plainness of elegance, not with the plainness of efficiency. Next to it stands the Porter angel.
A simple and relatively modest stone. Father Pitt includes it here for two reasons: first, because, in spite of its modest dimensions, it is one of the few stones actually signed by the stonecutter (A. J. Harbaugh); second, because “Minas Tindle” is just about Father Pitt’s favorite name ever.
