Early settler Joseph Allan is remembered on a simple and elegant marble obelisk. The inscription uses a surprising variety of lettering styles, after the manner of a Victorian poster, all of them cut with taste and skill, and harmonized perfectly.
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Joesph Allan Obelisk, Chartiers Cemetery
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Bigelow Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery
Edward Manning Bigelow (1850-1916), far-sighted city planner, gave us Schenley Park and Highland Park, great patches of green forest and field right in the middle of the city. They were on the edges of the city in Bigelow’s time, but he saw where the city was headed. For that we owe him immense gratitude; and if the expense of this elegant Doric mausoleum indicates that he managed to cash in some of the gratitude we owe him while he was still alive, we do not begrudge him his prosperity.
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Lowen Monument, Chartiers Cemetery
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA Similar in general appearance to many marble monuments of the 1870s, but the urn on top of a round column is unusual and a bit odd.
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Peter Wilbert Monument, Chartiers Cemetery
What a strange contrast in monuments: Peter Wilbert and his wife Christina died only two years apart, but he gets a splendidly artistic Gothic marble monument, and she gets as plain a block of granite as you’ll find in this section of the cemetery. One wonders whether the monuments were chosen to reflect the personalities of the deceased. Christina was born in 1818; she was six years older than her husband, and she came from Germany (so we read the inscription, but the ambiguous wording could also mean that Peter Wilbert came from Germany).
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Hamilton Monument, Homewood Cemetery
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Anyone who has seen enough science-fiction television would hesitate to step through the center of this extraordinary Egyptian construction; it seems obvious that it must be some sort of time portal leading back to the days of the pharaohs, or far across the galaxy to the planet from which Egyptian architects came. The verdigris of the bronze ornamentation fits very well with the polished granite.
Alfred Reed Hamilton, who died in 1927, seems to be the earliest burial in this plot, and that sounds about right for the date of this monument.
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