A Gothic Moderne design unique in Pittsburgh, as far as old Pa Pitt knows. The mausoleum is hard to photograph unless the light is exactly right; in sunlight, the polished white stone reflects so brightly that a digital camera simply registers a blank white pentagon. You never have to think about turning on the hot water in your house, and that is because of Edwin Ruud, a friend of George Westinghouse, who invented the automatic water heater.
A vigorous sculpture with a swirling upward motion appropriately illustrates the quotation from 1 Thessalonians 4:14. The quotation itself, however, is ungrammatically mangled in the inscription. The full verse is this: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.” The stonecutter, doubtless believing he had detected the King James translators in a solecism, inscribed, “They which sleep in Jesus, will God bring with him.” But the translators were right and the stonecutter was wrong; he has made nonsense of the verse.
George W. Morris, the first occupant of this mausoleum, died in 1899; it may have been put up for him some years before that.
Father Pitt assumes that the base of the sculpture is supposed to represent a cloudy whirlwind, but it could also be a pile of dirty laundry.
A very square Doric construction with a fine stained-glass window inside. Charles A. Brooks died in 1906, which is probably about the date of this mausoleum.
Here is another Doric temple, not extraordinary but in good taste. One of the best things about it is the site: the mausoleum sits in front of tall evergreens that make a deep green curtain behind it. According to cemetery records, Charles Meyran, the earliest occupant, was buried in 1891.
There is nothing extraordinary about this design; it is just a very well proportioned Doric mausoleum that shows good conservative taste. Mr. Alfred Hicks, its first resident, was a coal baron in the Allegheny valley, and, like many industrialists, also a banker. Being president of a bank seems to have been considered a logical part-time job for a rich industrialist.
