If Father Pitt reads this eroded inscription correctly, this is a tombstone for a two-year-old child named William Davis, son of James and Eliza Davis, who died in 1848. The epitaph is almost certainly a poem, but illegible in this light. The tombstone itself is a restrained example of the middle-nineteenth-century style that old Pa Pitt calls the “poster style,” because it resembles the style of printed posters of the same era.
This picture was taken in 2015.
Art Deco was popular only for a few decades in the early and middle twentieth century, and it never became a very popular style for cemetery monuments. But among the wealthy residents of the Homewood Cemetery, a restrained and tasteful Art Deco was quite fashionable in the years from roughly 1930 to 1950. In many cases it takes the form of a streamlining and radical simplification of classical and Gothic styles. Some of these monuments look like pieces of sets from the world’s most somber RKO musical.
One is tempted to describe this peculiar construction as “Doric Romanesque.” The rusticated stone and ponderous style cry out for Romanesque details, but instead we get smooth Doric columns and a smooth arch that seems to belong to another structure altogether. In fact, Father Pitt, who seldom passes a negative judgment on anyone’s mausoleum, is compelled by sheer honesty to say that he does not regard this design as a success. It is a cacophony rather than a harmony of disparate ideas. The bronze doors, however, are splendid, and no one can take that away from them.
