Among the windows in the Allegheny Cemetery Mausoleum or “Temple of Memories” are several devoted to famous works of literature and music. This one illustrates Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The stained glass in the mausoleum was done by the Willet studio of Philadelphia and the Hunt studio of Pittsburgh; Father Pitt does not know which one did this window.
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Allegheny Cemetery Mausoleum
The indoor mausoleum in Allegheny Cemetery was built in 1960 (or 1961, according to the Web site). The architects were Harley and Ellington. It’s now called the “Temple of Memories,” and it’s worth a visit even if you don’t like cemeteries all that much. It’s filled with striking stained glass from the Hunt and Willet studios, and it has a considerable collection of paintings by academic painters of the late nineteenth century that were probably nearly worthless when they were donated, but are coming back into fashion again. But what charms Father Pitt most is that the place is a time machine through which one can enter the early 1960s. Even though it has been expanded since then, the whole mausoleum has an early-1960s atmosphere, complete with appropriate piped-in music. One wanders among the dead feeling more like one of them than like one of the living.
We’ll be seeing a selection of pictures of the stained glass in here over the next few days.
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McKee Monument, Homewood Cemetery
“Youth and Age at the Tree of Life” is the title of this relief. It is rare to find a work of art with a title in a cemetery; we wish the artist had signed it as well.
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Nicholson Monument, Homewood Cemetery
There may be others, but this is the only zinc monument old Pa Pitt can remember finding in the Homewood Cemetery. Zinc monuments were prohibited in many high-class cemeteries, but sometimes people sneaked them in anyway. It’s actually a rather sumptuous monument by zinc standards, but it’s quite modest by Homewood Cemetery standards.
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Jane Brown Monument, Homewood Cemetery
An exceptional Gothic monument with beautiful foliage-and-flower reliefs. The inscription is also exceptional, with a wide variety of different lettering styles.
