This mausoleum and its stone mourner are doubtless both standard catalogue items. But they are picturesque, and much more so because of the deep blackness of the stone. Most stone buildings in Pittsburgh used to look like this, but few of them have escaped cleaning.
The other thing that makes the mausoleum stand out, of course, is the delightful name “Sunshine” over the door.
Leslie C. Steen died in 1867 at the age of 20, according to cemetery records. We may presume that this ponderous and weighty Gothic-classical monument was put up by his parents.
This is the only mausoleum in the cemetery [correction: it is one of two; note the kind comment below], a typical small rusticated-stone mausoleum. Originally it would have had bronze doors, but those are usually stolen from an unguarded cemetery and sold to scrap dealers who obviously have no idea where two men with a pickup truck might have got a large door-shaped chunk of bronze.
This fine vernacular-Gothic house serves as the gatehouse and office for the Mount Lebanon Cemetery, which was founded in 1901. It’s charmingly out of place in its neighborhood, which is a later development where most of the houses date from after the First World War.
Hidden on the left side of the cathedral is a narrow arm of the churchyard with a few old monuments, with the massive bulk of the Oliver Building towering over them. Most people who visit Trinity Churchyard never find their way to this side of it, but it’s worth a few moments of contemplation.
