A fairly early obelisk whose inscription is still perfectly clear. There was a very prominent Ormsby family after whom the borough of Ormsby was named; it is now the section of the South Side Flats east of 24th Street. Father Pitt does not know whether this Josephine was a member of that family. She must have died fairly young; her husband was buried beside her in 1889, suggesting that he never remarried for the remaining thirty-six years of his life.
A splendid Gothic construction in marble. Although marble was ultimately banished from cemeteries by fashion, and in some cases by cemetery regulation, its very instability gives it a charm that polished granite lacks. The longer this monument stands, the more it seems an organic part of the landscape.
Probably a stock design, but a pleasingly artistic one, representing a half-finished Romanesque arch carved out of a rustic boulder. The effect is appropriately romantic, as if the sculptor himself had been interrupted by death in the middle of creating his masterpiece.
A zinc or “white bronze” Gothic monument to Harriet Dunseath Ingold, mourned by her husband—but there is no indication that he was buried with her. Zinc was, according to the cemetery’s Web site, forbidden in the Allegheny Cemetery, but several plot owners managed to sneak in zinc monuments anyway. They are all still in good shape, with their inscriptions as legible as when they were installed—more than can be said for many of the much more expensive marble monuments nearby.
Because we have the catalogue, we know that this style of monument was the Monumental Bronze Company’s Design No. 122.
At first glance this mausoleum gives one the impression that it is nothing more than a big box of dead Snyders. But the tasteful details and fine proportions reward a longer look. It is plain with the plainness of elegance, not with the plainness of efficiency. Next to it stands the Porter angel.
