Art Deco can be a very dignified style when applied with taste. The classical symmetry of this monument is combined with a streamlining that would look good on the front of a locomotive.
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Blumenthal-Mendelson Monument, Tree of Life Cemetery
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Mervis Family Plot, Tree of Life Cemetery
The Mervises have a fine Art Deco monument with a shining lamp at the top (and a very artistic wasp nest in one corner). It was probably put up in 1941, when Joseph A. Mervis died, or possibly before, when the plot was purchased.
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Friederike Hannach Monument, Tree of Life Cemetery
Burials in the Tree of Life Cemetery go back into the middle 1800s. Here is one from 1871 that uses a stock-model monument with inscriptions in German, most of which have eroded to the point that old Pa Pitt was not able to read them. The name and date (in English), however, are still legible: Friederike Hannach, July 12, 1871.
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Tree of Life Cemetery, O’Hara Township
A small but peaceful Jewish cemetery right outside Sharpsburg. It is affiliated with the Tree of Life congregation in Squirrel Hill.
Jewish cemeteries are often densely crowded, like European cemeteries. This one is less crowded than the usual small Jewish cemetery, but more densely packed than the average American Protestant cemetery.
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B. F. Jones Monument, Allegheny Cemetery
Like a stone mushroom, this is the visible outcropping of an underground mausoleum. Instead of a heroic statue of steel baron Benjamin Franklin Jones, we get a contemplative allegorical pair, one laying a wreath and palm of victory where his body is buried, the other looking upward hoping to find the real B. F. Jones in that direction. Old Pa Pitt hopes so, too.
We have more pictures of the B. F. Jones monument from 2014.
