Just yesterday Father Pitt wrote that the Vandergrift mausoleum was probably a stock model. Here is the confirmation: the identical mausoleum, but with different bronze doors. After so many years of wandering in cemeteries, old Pa Pitt has developed an instinct for these things.
Probably a stock model. It is curiously hard to pin down the style of this structure; old Pa Pitt will call it Romanesque, on account of the medievalish columns and the arched bronze doors. The stained glass inside is another standard catalogue item. The bronze doors bear reliefs of laurels and palms—symbols of victory in death.
Doubtless a memorial company’s stock model, this small mausoleum is encrusted with floridly Victorian Romanesque details in a rather weighty German style. A good architect would have displayed more taste, but would a real architect have been able to provide so many details for the money?
Almost certainly modeled after the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, this is about as archaeologically correct as Doric architecture gets in Pittsburgh. It is one of the few peripteral mausoleum designs you will find in Pittsburgh cemeteries, peripteral meaning that it has columns on all sides.
Pictures taken in the Allegheny Cemetery in January of 2000. The camera was an Argus 40.
