Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Author: Father Pitt

  • Hartje Mausoleum Homewood Cemetery

    This little Egyptian mausoleum is noticeably different from others of its style. The lotus columns and winged sun disk are there, but the rusticated stone is not usual on Egyptian monuments, and the sides of the mausoleum do not slope in the approved Egyptian manner. In fact this seems to be a standard rustic mausoleum with an Egyptian porch and door. But the door is something to see. In addition to its lotus-pattern grille, it has what appears to be a large knocker, which one might think superfluous in a house of the dead, but then one never knows.

  • Miller Monument, Homewood Cemetery

    A slim and elegant Art Deco stele with a lily-bearing angel, this monument is a bit of a puzzle. The style is of the 1930s or thereabouts, but the two people commemorated both died in the 1860s, before the Homewood Cemetery existed. One can only presume that their descendants made a pile of money and decided to remember them properly.

  • James P. Stiver Monument, Homewood Cemetery

    The life-size statue is unusually positioned, so that she always blocks the view of the name “Stiver”; but then James P. Stiver’s name is clearly visible above her head, so we may allow her that artistic license. The monument stands in the shade of substantial trees, and the statue is posed so naturally that she can create the impression of a real woman who has momentarily paused at the Stiver monument. She nearly made old Pa Pitt jump out of his skin.

  • Baxmyer Monument, South Side Cemetery

    The flower-strewing mourner is nearly identical to the one on the Potts monument in the Mount Lebanon Cemetery—so nearly identical, in fact, that they almost certainly came from the same monument company. Even the hands are broken off in the same places; the wrists are obviously a structural weakness of the design.

  • Archibald and Rachel Bryant Monument, Union Dale Cemetery

    “in their death they were not divided”: Archibald and Rachel Bryant died within days of each other in 1865.