Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Author: Father Pitt

  • Brick Monument, Beechview German Lutheran Cemetery

    This strange combination of symbols stands out as the oddest monument in the not-quite-forgotten German Lutheran cemetery in Beechview. The cemetery is mowed a few times a year in a haphazard fashion, with many of the graves now entirely engulfed by woods, and most of the rest surrounded by weeds; we were fortunate to arrive when the weeds had recently been given their annual trimming. Fred and Carolina Brick are remembered on a scroll in front of a draped rustic seat on top of a cushion sitting on a tree stump, with a calla and a fern in front.

  • Christian Wilbert Mausoleum, Mount Lebanon Cemetery

    The very rich had their mausoleums designed for them by famous architects. The merely adequately rich ordered their mausoleums from a catalogue. We can say with some confidence that this attractive but undistinguished Romanesque mausoleum is a stock model because it is identical, including the statue, to the Braun mausoleum in the South Side Cemetery.

  • George J. Schmitt Mausoleum, Union Dale Cemetery

    The George J. Schmitt mausoleum is a tasteful Doric temple with a glorious stained-glass window. Regrettably, the Union Dale Cemetery is not well documented on line: in fact, it is hard to find anything about this mausoleum with a Google search except old Pa Pitt’s previous article on stained glass in the Union Dale Cemetery.

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    “Unto Thee O Lord Do I Lift Up My Soul”

  • Mellon Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery

    By some standards the richest family in the world, the Mellons preferred good taste to ostentation in this simple Doric temple, built for James Ross Mellon, who died in 1934. The sculpture in front, “Motherless” by George A. Lawson (1897), actually doesn’t memorialize any particular dead Mellon; it was a piece of garden statuary that James Ross Mellon liked, but his heirs didn’t want in their garden.

    Section 14
    Lot 97

  • Bronze Angels on the James Oliver Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    The monument to steel baron James B. Oliver and his family is one of the largest heaps of bronze in the Allegheny Cemetery. Four beautiful angels stand guard at the corners.