Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Author: Father Pitt

  • Kubler Monument, St. Michael’s Cemetery

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    Almost all the monuments in St. Michael’s Cemetery are standard items from monument catalogues. (A century or so ago, you could even order cemetery monuments from Sears Roebuck, the way you ordered everything else from Sears.) This one is almost certainly a standard item, too, but it is a very unusual one, probably one of the more expensive monuments in the cemetery. The curving text of the inscriptions is a distinctive touch. There is space for a good many more inscriptions than were ever cut. The Kublers were born in “Lorraine, France”—an interesting distinction that is a little hard to interpret. When the Kublers were born, all of Lorraine belonged to France, but when they died a large part of it belonged to the German Empire, the fruit of the disastrous (for France) Franco-Prussian War.

    Some of the pictures here were taken in 2014, and the rest in 2022. We also have some more recent pictures of the Kubler monument.

  • John Schmotzer Mausoleum, St. Michael’s Cemetery

    A good example of the standard-issue rustic mausoleum of the early to middle twentieth century, and a good example of the fate of many mausoleums in smaller cemeteries. The doors are gone; they were probably bronze, and doubtless were sold for scrap by the thieves. Whatever glass there was in the back is also gone. The mausoleum is now open to the elements; but, of course, it is so solidly constructed that it can probably remain that way for centuries.

  • Donnelly Mausoleum, St. Mary’s Cemetery

    This must have been one of the earliest interments in the cemetery, which opened in 1849, the year Henry Donnelly died. It is certainly grand, and more than a little mysterious—perhaps the most striking in-ground mausoleum in Pittsburgh. In the early and middle nineteenth century, these mausoleums cut into a hillside were the usual resting places of the rich; they are always referred to as “mausoleums,” anyway, but perhaps they would more properly be called tombs, reserving “mausoleum” for a free-standing building. They fell out of favor by the 1870s or so, and proper mausoleums came into fashion.

  • Joseph Rahe Monument, St. Michael’s Cemetery

    An unusually fine Pietà tops this monument, which stands at the edge of a steep hill with a stunning view of the Monongahela valley below. 

  • Imling Monument, St. Michael’s Cemetery

    The obelisk with a cross is peculiar to Catholic cemeteries; it is almost never found in Protestant cemeteries. Here is a typical example from St. Michael’s Cemetery, the vertiginous burying-ground of a German Catholic parish on the South Side Slopes. As with many of the older monuments here, the inscriptions are in German.

    It appears that the family lost touch with this monument at some time between 1944 and, perhaps, 1960 or so; the death date of Anton Imling, born 1868, was never filled in.