Category: Homewood Cemetery

  • Weber Monument, Homewood Cemetery

    Weber monument

    An angel steps out of a rusticated boulder to drop a flower on the hallowed ground of the Weber family’s graves.

    Angel
    Face of the angel
    Weber monument
  • Swartz Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery

    Swartz Mausoleum

    A simple rustic mausoleum half set into the hill, with a porch featuring Tuscan columns, a kind of simplified Doric order (classical architectural writers do not distinguish it from Doric).

    Swartz and Hoting mausoleums
  • Burnett Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery

    Burnett Mausoleum

    A small mausoleum or vault, modern with a hint of Art Deco in the decorations. The bronze doors are particularly good, with angular decorations that remind old Pa Pitt of German Jugendstil.

  • McCluen Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery

    McCluen mausoleum

    A Renaissance idea of a classical temple, with columns in the “modern Ionic” style—that is, with the volutes on the corners of the capitals. The rusticated stone of the walls makes a pleasing contrast with the smooth columns, doorframe, and pediment.

    McCluen Mausoleum
  • Wilkins Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery

    Wilkins mausoleum

    Of all the mausoleums in Pittsburgh, this is the one that most deserves the name. It is a kind of scale model of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the tomb of King Mausolus, which gave its name to all other freestanding above-ground tombs. The Wilkins family, early and influential settlers, lived at Homewood, the estate that later became this cemetery; and their mausoleum commemorates generations of Wilkinses past. Because the inscriptions vary in style, old Pa Pitt speculates that they duplicate inscriptions originally cut in old tombstones.

    Wilkins mausoleum
    Inscription

    WILLIAM WILKINS
    BORN IN CARLISLE, PA.
    DEC. XX A. D. MDDCCLXXIX
    DIED AT HOMEWOOD
    ON THE XXIII DAY OF
    JUNE A. D. MDCCCLXV.

    MATILDA DALLAS WILKINS
    BORN IN PHILADELPHIA
    NOV. XXIII A. D. MDCCXCVIII
    DIED IN PHILADELPHIA
    DEC. XXVIII A. D. MDCCCLXXXI

    Inscription

    CATHRINE HOLMES WILKINS
    (& INFANT DAUGHTER)
    WIFE OF
    WILLIAM WILKINS.
    BORN 26TH OF DEC. 1788
    DIED 31ST OF JULY 1816.

    RACHEL HOLLINGSWORTH,
    SISTER OF WM. WILKINS
    & WIFE OF
    JOHN HOLLINGSWORTH, ESQ.
    BORN IN CARLISLE,
    JUNE 21ST, 1769.
    DIED IN PITTSBURGH,
    SEPT. 8TH, 1844

    Inscription

    IN MEMORY OF
    A. J. DALLAS WILKINS,
    BELOVED SON OF WILLIAM
    & MATILDA WILKINS.
    DIED THE 28TH OF JULY 1834,
    IN THE 13TH YEAR OF HIS AGE.

    Inscription

    BREVET MAJOR
    JOHN SANDERS,
    UNITED STATES ENGINEERS U.S.A.
    BORN AT LEXINGTON, KY.
    MAR. 12TH 1810.
    DIED AT FORT DELAWARE
    JULY 29TH, 1858.

    Wilkins mausoleum