Erected in 1877, this column is unusual in carrying two distinguished works of sculpture in different media. The bronze relief is by Carl Conrads (who actually signed it); the cemetery site does not attribute the stone statue, and old Pa Pitt’s eye for sculptural style is not good enough to say whether it is or is not Conrads’ work.
The Oliver family came from Ireland, and this striking Celtic cross stands in the middle of their plot to remind them of their ancestry.
According to the cemetery’s site, this fantastic and imaginative mausoleum seems to have been built for James Kennedy Moorhead; it was designed by Louis Morgenroth and built in 1862, though Moorhead lived twenty-two years after that. The vegetation rising from the roof only adds to the mystery and romance, as if one had stumbled across a lost Gothic Khmer temple deep in the jungle. The name “Moorhead” appears over the door on one side, and “Murdoch” on the opposite side.
Even the cemetery’s own site knows almost nothing about this monument and the man it memorializes. It is much eroded by time (it dates from 1850 or so), but it is a unique design, and the decay gives it a certain air of romantic mystery.
An exceptionally beautiful and tasteful contemplative mourner put up about 1890 for Wilson Miller, head of the Pittsburgh Locomotive Works. Note the interesting hybrid classical-Gothic base.
