By some standards the richest family in the world, the Mellons preferred good taste to ostentation in this simple Doric temple, built for James Ross Mellon, who died in 1934. The sculpture in front, “Motherless” by George A. Lawson (1897), actually doesn’t memorialize any particular dead Mellon; it was a piece of garden statuary that James Ross Mellon liked, but his heirs didn’t want in their garden.
Section 14
Lot 97
A simple little Doric temple with an exceptionally fine stained-glass window.
An elegant little Gothic chapel with a bit of Art Deco flair. The stained glass inside shows Charity distributing gifts to Music, Drama, and the Arts.
This magnificent Roman temple holds more dead people than any other mausoleum in the Homewood Cemetery, with an extensive basement accessible by a removable section of mosaic floor. (How’s that for a scene in a Gothic novel?) H. J. Heinz, the pickle and ketchup king, and generations of his descendants are buried here, including his great-grandson Senator John Heinz.
Addendum: The architects of the mausoleum were Vrydaugh & Wolfe, who also designed Warwick House for Howard Heinz.
