The typical family plot in the Homewood Cemetery has one large family monument and individual headstones for each family member. Here is one of those plots where the family monument is rather grander than usual, making it a more suitable neighbor for the Fricks and Heinzes and so forth who rest nearby.
Dr. Clark, whose practice was clearly quite successful, took his professional credentials with him to the grave. The Doric mausoleum would be ordinary but for the arched doorway, which is unusual on classical mausoleums in Pittsburgh.
Edward Manning Bigelow (1850-1916), far-sighted city planner, gave us Schenley Park and Highland Park, great patches of green forest and field right in the middle of the city. They were on the edges of the city in Bigelow’s time, but he saw where the city was headed. For that we owe him immense gratitude; and if the expense of this elegant Doric mausoleum indicates that he managed to cash in some of the gratitude we owe him while he was still alive, we do not begrudge him his prosperity.
Anyone who has seen enough science-fiction television would hesitate to step through the center of this extraordinary Egyptian construction; it seems obvious that it must be some sort of time portal leading back to the days of the pharaohs, or far across the galaxy to the planet from which Egyptian architects came. The verdigris of the bronze ornamentation fits very well with the polished granite.
Alfred Reed Hamilton, who died in 1927, seems to be the earliest burial in this plot, and that sounds about right for the date of this monument.
One wonders whether the neighbors think of the Straub mausoleum as bringing down the tone of the neighborhood. Among the architect-designed classical temples of the Pitcairns and Clemsons and so forth, here is a little Romanesque mausoleum that seems to be a dealer’s stock model; the William H. McCarthy mausoleum in Calvary Cemetery is identical, with the addition of a cross to suit Catholic taste. One likes to imagine the spirits of the very rich reacting the way they would react if they were still alive and their new neighbor announced that he was going to put up a very tasteful manufactured home on his lot.
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.
