The exquisite polished granite sets this mausoleum apart even from all the tasteful and expensive mausoleums that surround it.
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Jenkins Monument, Homewood Cemetery
You may not have the money or space for a mausoleum, but you can still demonstrate exquisite taste, as in this monument, whose details are Romanesque but whose form and inscription are severely classical.
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Brown Pyramid, Homewood Cemetery
Like the Huhn pyramid in the Allegheny Cemetery (but on a much larger scale), this is a classical interpretation of the Egyptian pyramid, with proportions more like those of the Pyramid of Cestius along the Appian Way than like those of a true Egyptian pyramid. It is striking enough that it appears in much of the Homewood Cemetery’s publicity. It was designed by Alden & Harlow and built for William Harry Brown, banker and heir to a shipping empire, in 1898. Mr. Brown’s firm was the largest shipper of coal on the rivers, which obviously made him quite a pile of money.
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George Mesta Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA A fine example of the Egyptian style that was very popular among Masons in the early twentieth century. George Mesta owned a machine shop in Homestead. It was (and this is not an exaggeration) a mile long. His wife Perle (also buried here) ultimately made more of a mark on the world after George died in 1925: she moved to Washington and became the city’s top hostess. President Truman made her ambassador to Luxembourg, where she navigated the minefield of American-Luxembourgeois relations with aplomb.
The picture above was from 2014. Below, three pictures from 2022.
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Berg Obelisk, Smithfield East End Cemetery
The basic shape of the obelisk is set, so to speak, in stone; but the base and the material allow for quite a bit of variation. A well-chosen material like this makes the Berg family’s obelisk stand out in a forest of obelisks, guiding Bergs to the family plot across the wide landscape of the cemetery.
