One of the very oldest legible stones Father Pitt has found around here. There are much earlier graves in the churchyards of Trinity Cathedral and Old St. Luke’s, but they were marked with native shale, and time has obliterated the inscriptions. This stone is in excellent shape, and it makes old Pa Pitt nostalgic for the days when stonecutting, even for modest graves, was a craft, rather than a business providing uniform products to the deceased masses.
Zinc monuments like this were cheap substitutes for stone; they were sold as “white bronze” by the monument dealers. High-class cemeteries considered them vulgar and often prohibited them outright, as apparently the Allegheny Cemetery did; but somehow some families managed to sneak them in anyway. As it turns out, they last better than the expensive marble from which many of the best monuments were made. They were constructed from interchangeable parts, so that one could choose from a huge variety of symbols, epitaphs, canned rhymes, and Bible verses to be included in the monument, and the manufacturer would oblige simply by screwing in the proper plates. Custom inscriptions were also much cheaper to make by stamping letters in standard plates than by cutting them in stone.
Here is a particularly spledid zinc monument, nine feet tall, festooned with as many slogans and symbols as the bereaved husband could afford. In spite of a clumsy restoration attempt—never, never restore a zinc monument with concrete, the Smithsonan warns—it is overall in excellent condition after 134 years or so.
In front are two little zinc headstones for “Mother” and “Father.”
A popular style; there are several similar statue-on-pedestal monuments in this cemetery. This one has been covered with inscriptions on every available space, the base being pressed into service when there was no more room on the sides.
A rather Jeffersonian basilica with a dome and a porch with “modern Ionic” columns. It was built in 1903 for William Henry Singer, a steel baron, who lived six more years to enjoy looking at it from the outside.
We take the cemetery’s word for it that this is a separate John Munhall from the one memorialized right behind this Gothic monument, but we reserve some private doubts. The cemetery site says this: “John Munhall was a landowner in West Mifflin Township in the late 19th century and a borough there was named after him; the stone with the inset angel is his. Margaret, Hetty, and another John are under the Gothic canopy tomb, unique in the Cemetery.” But Hetty and Margaret are definitely mentioned on the angel monument, as you can see in the picture Father Pitt has provided for you. On the other hand, it is hard to understand why John Munhall would require two expensive memorials. At any rate, this is a fine piece of Gothic stonework, but old Pa Pitt thinks it’s a bit of a shame that it had to be placed right in front of that splendid angel.
