An update: Note the comment below requesting information on Bianca DeConciliis. Both Father Pitt and his commenter would appreciate the help, which can be left in the form of a comment on this article.
A life-size portrait of a beautiful young woman who died at twenty or twenty-one: she was born in 1921 and died in 1942.
This exceptionally extravagant mausoleum, probably the grandest (certainly the tallest) in Calvary Cemetery, is a sort of late-Art-Deco interpretation of Gothic architecture. The door is beautiful, and small reliefs near the top document what must have been an eventful life in Pittsburgh business.
Another hulking black Pittsburgh Romanesque mausoleum, this one is distinguished by a very unusual apse. In many cemeteries, unfortunately, vandalism has persuaded the keepers to block the entrances to mausoleums with ugly concrete. It now becomes a task for archaeologists from future centuries to discover what is inside that apse.
The Romanesque style and the sooty blackness of the stone make this mausoleum look particularly Pittsburghy. The Theodore F. Straub mausoleum in the Homewood Cemetery is identical (but without the cross), so this was probably a dealer’s standard model.
The statue on top seems to be a version of that very popular flower-strewing mourner who appears in many of our cemeteries, usually handless if she is at ground level; compare the Aul, Potts, Alexander H. King, Baxmyer, and Nickel monuments.
Unlike most other cemetery statues, this figure is walking forward, perhaps hastening to bring her flowers to Mr. McVey’s grave.
