Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Adams

  • Coffin and Adams Obelisks, South Side Cemetery

    Coffin and Adams obelisks

    You are qualified to be a mortician if you can sit down with a client named Coffin and make no remark whatsoever on the name.

    Coffin obelisk
    Adams obelisk

    The Adams obelisk is one of the few monuments signed by the makers, Campbell & Horigan.

    Campbell & Horigan
    Base of the monument

    The Adams family plot is still surrounded by its circular stone fence. Groundskeepers hate these stone fences, but the South Side Cemetery has been less aggressive about removing them than most other cemeteries.

    We have more pictures of the Coffin and Adams obelisks.

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  • Adams Obelisk, South Side Cemetery

    Dated 1887, this splendid Victorian obelisk stands guard over a circular family plot. The combination of Egyptian form and Gothic details sounds as if it ought to be an architectural train wreck, but it works well—perhaps because the form of an obelisk, with its upward thrust and its terminal point, is very much in sympathy with Gothic principles.