One of the very few mausoleums in the South Side Cemetery that still possess bronze doors, which are irresistible to thieves. The mausoleum itself is too plain to assign to any particular style; the general shape, with sloping sides, is a bit Egyptian, but there are no Egyptian details. Nevertheless, stock design though it may be, it is tasteful and pleasing. Especially with its doors still on.
There is only one mausoleum in this cemetery, but it is an unusually fine one; it looks like an architect-designed mausoleum rather than a dealer’s stock model. The Romanesque arch and pilasters are in exactly the right proportions to the whole, and the carved decoration is beautiful without being ostentatious. It has even kept its bronze doors. The landscaping adds to the picturesque effect: large cedars have grown up on both sides, making the whole plot look like some Norman-era English churchyard.
There is nothing extraordinary about this design; it is just a very well proportioned Doric mausoleum that shows good conservative taste. Mr. Alfred Hicks, its first resident, was a coal baron in the Allegheny valley, and, like many industrialists, also a banker. Being president of a bank seems to have been considered a logical part-time job for a rich industrialist.
Another mausoleum in the style Father Pitt called “Doric Romanesque” when he saw it in the Davis mausoleum nearby. But this is, to his eye, a much more successful design. The Doric columns are fatter and support a heavy stone arch directly; there is no cacophony between light and heavy as on the Davis mausoleum. Everything looks weighty and primitive. It is not Father Pitt’s favorite style, but if we accept it as a style, this structure carries it off where the Davis mausoleum fails.
The first burial in this mausoleum seems to have been John Duncan Evans in 1921, and we can take that as a good guess at the date of the mausoleum. The style is distinctive: it is more secular Gothic—the Gothic of city gates and guildhalls—than the usual ecclesiastically inspired Gothic found in Pittsburgh mausoleums.
