Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Bronze

  • Berryman Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery

    This mausoleum seems to have received its first burial in 1927; if Father Pitt were to take a guess, he might say it had been waiting around empty for some time before that. There are none of the quirks of the advancing twentieth century: this is a timeless Doric temple, simple but correct. The stained glass inside is modestly attractive, though the cross is a bit out of place—it does not seem to be a thing that could naturally exist in the landscape. Old Pa Pitt is also not sure why there is a cheese hovering above it. The bronze palms on the doors are also notable.

  • Calbraith Perry Rodgers Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    In 1911, Calbraith Perry Rodgers became the first man to fly across the continent of North America, from Atlantic to Pacific—even though he had made his very first flight only a few months earlier. He flew a Wright Model EX biplane called the Vin Fiz Flyer, after the soda pop that sponsored his trip. The plane is immortalized in bronze on this monument (and the plane itself can be seen in the Air and Space Museum, Washington).

    This was not a nonstop flight; it would be a long time before planes capable of flying that distance were built. There were 75 stops, of which 16 were technically crashes. But it was an epochal event in aviation; it showed, only eight years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, that airplanes had matured to the point where practical long-distance travel was possible. The inscription tells the story of the flight.

    Only the date of death tells the end of the story: the next year, in 1912, Rodgers became the first man to die in an airplane collision with a flock of birds. Even in death, he was a pioneer.

  • Walter Monument, St. John’s Lutheran Cemetery (Spring Hill)

    A set of rustic boulders, with a bronze relief depicting a weeping angel (Doctor Who fans will be pleased) overcome in the middle of his harp-playing. Unambiguously male angels are actually rare in monuments around here; and although this was probably a monument-dealer’s stock monument, the bronze relief is a fine piece of work.

  • George Hogg Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    The bronze angel is by the well-known sculptor Henry Kirke Brown; according to the cemetery site, it was one of the first bronze statues cast by an American foundry. Since George Hogg died at the end of 1849, the angel probably dates from about 1850.

    More pictures of the George Hogg monument.

  • Schoonmaker Monument, Homewood Cemetery

    A beautiful bronze angel lays a well-deserved palm on the monument to James Martinus Schoonmaker, who as a 22-year-old colonel in the Union Army led a charge that, years later, earned him the Medal of Honor. Of course, gallantry in combat does not bring in the sort of money that buys extraordinary works of art for one’s grave. That came from the coke industry and the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad.