Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Category: Chartiers Cemetery

  • Henry Monument, Chartiers Cemetery

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    A typical family-plot arrangement of large monument and small headstones, but Father Pitt was struck by the harmonious design of the monument, which echoes the volutes of its Ionic columns in larger volutes on top. Three of the headstones also have matching volutes. Even the steps have carved volutes.

    Unfortunately, those matching headstones became impossible to get, so more recent Henrys have had to make do with standard granite blocks. That is one of the sacrifices we make for the convenience of mass-production monuments.

    John Henry died in 1902, and that is probably about the date of the monument.

  • Joesph Allan Obelisk, Chartiers Cemetery

    Early settler Joseph Allan is remembered on a simple and elegant marble obelisk. The inscription uses a surprising variety of lettering styles, after the manner of a Victorian poster, all of them cut with taste and skill, and harmonized perfectly.

  • Lowen Monument, Chartiers Cemetery

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    Similar in general appearance to many marble monuments of the 1870s, but the urn on top of a round column is unusual and a bit odd.

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  • Peter Wilbert Monument, Chartiers Cemetery

    What a strange contrast in monuments: Peter Wilbert and his wife Christina died only two years apart, but he gets a splendidly artistic Gothic marble monument, and she gets as plain a block of granite as you’ll find in this section of the cemetery. One wonders whether the monuments were chosen to reflect the personalities of the deceased. Christina was born in 1818; she was six years older than her husband, and she came from Germany (so we read the inscription, but the ambiguous wording could also mean that Peter Wilbert came from Germany).

  • Civil War Monument, Chartiers Cemetery

    The statue of a soldier looks very determined in a chunky 1880s way. When granite replaced marble as the material of choice for monument sculptors, it seems as though it took them a while to learn how to convey any subtlety in the harder stone.