A plain mausoleum of rusticated stone, this one is exceptional in the South Side Cemetery for retaining its bronze doors; almost all the other mausoleums in the cemetery are now missing their doors, which can be sold as scrap by thieves to dealers who apparently never wonder why someone would happen to be carrying a large ornate door on the back of his truck. There is even a bit of almost-intact stained glass in the back.
A marble monument in what we might call folk-romantic style. The recording angel has been eroded by pollution and time, but it does not look as though it was ever a very skillful carving, Nevertheless, the whole effect of the monument is very pleasing.
The epitaph (a poem commonly found on monuments of the era) reads:
Dear mother, rest in quiet sleep,
While friends in sorrow o’er thee weep,
And here their heartfelt offerings bring
And near thy grave thy requiem sing.
Father Pitt hopes the Wilder family (who are doubtless kind and indulgent people) will forgive him for saying that this is without a doubt the ugliest mausoleum in the greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area. It looks like a thing built by a contractor who had never built, or perhaps even seen, a mausoleum before, and thought of it as a sort of garage for coffins. But it is distinctive. There is nothing else in the South Side Cemetery that looks remotely like it; and, since it occupies a prominent plot at the intersection of two drives in the cemetery, there is no missing it.
A heavily shrouded obelisk from about 1880, the drapery rendered in a chunky and abstract fashion. Old Pa Pitt sometimes wonders whether there is a certain amount of giggling at the undertaker’s whenever a customer named Coffin comes in.
A simple and tasteful marble obelisk from 1877, made more attractive by the gradual erosion of the stone. In spite of the erosion, the inscription is still very clear.
