Tag: Crosses

  • 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
  • Lockhart Cross, Homewood Cemetery

    Lockhart cross

    A simplified Celtic cross with more than a whiff of Art Deco; it was probably put up in the 1930s, since the earliest Lockhart here died in 1936. The cemetery’s site attributes the monument to the Campell-Horigan company of Pittsburgh.

    Lockhart cross
    Reliefs
  • Stanley Zaksesks Cross, St. Anne Parish Cemetery

    Stanley Zaksesks cross

    Stanley Zaksesks died in 1920 when he was eleven or twelve years old. Perhaps his father worked in the construction business; this monument appears to have been cast in concrete. The name and date are painted.

  • J. Abate Cross, St. Anne Parish Cemetery

    J. Abate Cross

    A fairly large cross for a seventeen-year-old whose family perhaps could not afford a professional monument. Note the one attempt at decoration: a small sun pattern (or something) at the top.

  • Hipp and Gerold Cross, St. Anne Parish Cemetery

    Hipp and Gerold Cross

    A tall cross with fine carving and a bit of Art Deco flair for two rectors of St. Ann’s (note the spelling; the parish is now called St. Anne).

    Carving
    Inscription

    HIPP

    REV.
    CHARLES HIPP
    RECTOR OF ST. ANN’S
    CHURCH 1907–1918
    BORN OCT. 9, 1887
    ORDAINED
    MAY S6, 1899
    DIED NOV. 7, 1918

    GEROLD

    REV.
    JOSEPH V. GEROLD
    RECTOR OF ST. ANN’S
    CHURCH 1918–1929
    BORN AUG. 19, 1876
    ORDAINED
    JULY 4, 1901
    DIED SEPT. 21, 1929