Edward Manning Bigelow (1850-1916), far-sighted city planner, gave us Schenley Park and Highland Park, great patches of green forest and field right in the middle of the city. They were on the edges of the city in Bigelow’s time, but he saw where the city was headed. For that we owe him immense gratitude; and if the expense of this elegant Doric mausoleum indicates that he managed to cash in some of the gratitude we owe him while he was still alive, we do not begrudge him his prosperity.
One wonders whether the neighbors think of the Straub mausoleum as bringing down the tone of the neighborhood. Among the architect-designed classical temples of the Pitcairns and Clemsons and so forth, here is a little Romanesque mausoleum that seems to be a dealer’s stock model; the William H. McCarthy mausoleum in Calvary Cemetery is identical, with the addition of a cross to suit Catholic taste. One likes to imagine the spirits of the very rich reacting the way they would react if they were still alive and their new neighbor announced that he was going to put up a very tasteful manufactured home on his lot.
The statue on top seems to be a version of that very popular flower-strewing mourner who appears in many of our cemeteries, usually handless if she is at ground level; compare the Aul, Potts, Alexander H. King, Baxmyer, and Nickel monuments.
Alexander Rowland (or Rolland) Peacock was a business partner of Andrew Carnegie; he built this tasteful Doric mausoleum for himself years before he died in 1928.
A curiously shaped rustic mausoleum with Gothic pilasters that seem a little like an afterthought. As we have mentioned elsewhere, all the mausoleums in the South Side Cemetery are missing their doors.
A small rustic temple with smooth Doric columns and a cross. All the mausoleums in the South Side Cemetery are bricked up like this; probably they all had bronze doors, and every one has been stolen.
