The McKeesport and Versailles Cemetery is one of the most picturesque rural cemeteries in the Pittsburgh area. This entrance gate takes us from the mundane and depressed world of downtown McKeesport into a fantasy landscape where all is serenity. What more appropriate way to make the transition than through a gate that is itself a Gothic fantasy, with a gatehouse that looks like something from our favorite book of fairy tales?
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Fifth Avenue Gate, McKeesport and Versailles Cemetery
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Penn Avenue Gatehouse, Allegheny Cemetery
The tower, as the cemetery’s Web site points out, bears a noticeable resemblance to the tower on the Allegheny County Courthouse downtown, which was widely considered one of the most splendid buildings in America. The architect of this magnificent entrance complex was Henry Alexander Macomb, a Philadelphia architect who won a competition entered by many of the great names in Pittsburgh architecture of the period. It was begun in 1887 and finished in 1889.
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Lower Gatehouse of Allegheny Cemetery
The Butler Street gatehouse was part of the original design of the cemetery in the 1840s, and it serves its function perfectly. From a busy city street we enter a romantic fantasy landscape that might have come straight from Sir Walter Scott. The contrast is almost as great as the contrast between life and afterlife.
