Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Angels

  • Haas Mausoleum, St. Michael’s Cemetery

    Haas mausoleum

    An attractive Art Deco design with more traditionally Gothic bronze doors that have survived because this mausoleum is right at the cemetery entrance, where people might tend to notice two men with a pickup truck fiddling with a mausoleum in the middle of the night. (Note the fence spike in the foreground: old Pa Pitt apologizes for that, but it’s sometimes hard to see what’s in the picture when the camera has to be held above a fence.) This is one of only two mausoleums in St. Michael’s Cemetery, and it is the grander of the two.

    Stained glass of the Holy Family

    The stained-glass window of the Holy Family is a very good one, though it was probably a standard catalogue item.

    Angel in bronze

    Angels adorn the bronze doors.

    Bronze decorations
    Corner view

  • Nickel Family Plot, South Side Cemetery

    We also have some older pictures of the Nickel plot.

    Lina B. Nickel mourner

    A family plot of matching graves that is missing one important tenant, or at least the inscription for him.

    Nickel family plot
    Lina B. Nickel

    Lina B. Nickel, who died in 1916 at the age of 29 or 30, is buried here under an inscription identifying her as “MY WIFE.” But the matching headstone is blank, suggesting that Mr. Nickel (whose name was almost certainly William; see below) is not buried here. A husband in mourning might think that of course he would never marry again and would be buried next to his late wife when he died, but a year or two or five go by, and he begins to take a more realistic view of the rest of his life. Or it is quite possible that the whole matching set was ordered when the two sons died in 1912.

    Mourner

    A standard flower-dropping mourner. The wrists are always a weak point in this design.

    William and John Nickel

    Two young sons, William Jr. and John, died in 1912, very probably of the same childhood disease. From the name William Jr. we can deduce the father’s name.

    Angel

    This angel might also have been dropping flowers, as we can guess from its downward gaze and the eroded bouquet.

    Face and wings

  • Weber Monument, Homewood Cemetery

    Weber monument

    An angel steps out of a rusticated boulder to drop a flower on the hallowed ground of the Weber family’s graves.

    Angel
    Face of the angel
    Weber monument

  • Porter Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    Porter monument

    This striking angel is the work of Brenda Putnam, but the cemetery’s site (in an article that has since disappeared) was vague and confusing on dates. It said that the bronze angel was cast “after 1910” as a replica of an original granite sculpture. The earliest dated Putnam work listed in her sparse Wikipedia article is from 1917. Brenda Putnam would have been twenty years old in 1910; she would thus have been a teenager when the granite version was done, if the date “1910” means anything at all. Henry Kirke Porter, identified as “the best-known Porter here” by the cemetery’s site, died in 1921, and perhaps that gives us a better guess at the date of the sculpture.

    If old Pa Pitt had to guess, he would imagine that those glorious wings were too heavy for granite, and the bronze cast was made when the original sculpture proved unstable.

    Angel by Brenda Putnam
    Closer to the angel
    Face of the angel

  • Sutmeyer Mausoleum, Allegheny Cemetery

    Sutmeyer mausoleum

    A small stock mausoleum with indeterminate medievalish details. The cross-bearing angel on top has weathered into picturesque abstraction, looking far more otherworldly now than it did when it was new.

    Angel on the Sutmeyer mausoleum