The more one looks at this column, the odder it seems. One can only describe the style as “Egyptian Gothic.” The main column has an Egyptian capital, as do the smaller columns at the corners of the base; but the form of the base is Victorian Classical-Gothic. The statue on top holds the rope of Hope’s anchor in her left hand; she also holds something in her right hand, but Father Pitt has not been able to figure out what it is.
Tucked against the unflattering backdrop of Children’s Hospital, this is an unusual Gothic design, heavy and Pittsburghy, with an exceptionally splendid iron door that appears to have been plated originally.
A prickly Gothic monument to an officer killed in the Civil War. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” says the epitaph, although it probably didn’t feel all that good at the time.
A miniature Gothic church that strongly emphasizes the prickly pointiness of the Gothic style. No cleaning has been done in St. Mary’s, so many of the best mausoleums are still pristine Pittsburgh black.
The Sunshine mausoleum from 1897, with its patient mourner uncomplainingly enduring a roosting bird, is almost certainly another ordered-from-a-catalogue mausoleum. But who is not delighted to see the name “Sunshine” engraved in cheerfully rustic letters over the entrance to a tomb? The style is hard to pin down: it has the heaviness of Romanesque, but the pointed arch suggests Gothic ambitions.
