Some winter pictures of this extravagantly Gothic mausoleum built in 1862 for James Kennedy Moorhead. The architect was Louis Morgenroth, who also designed the original Allegheny County Civil War monument for Monument Hill, which was moved to West Park in 1931.
We have more pictures of the Moorhead mausoleum, and a little more information, in an earlier article.
This hilltop cemetery has few really interesting monuments, but old Pa Pitt has a well-known weakness for rustic stumps. This looks like an early-twentieth-century stump, but all the Kennedys buried nearby died in the later twentieth century; we suspect, therefore, that the family bought the plot and erected the stump, and then went on to live long and prosperous lives for decades.
According to the cemetery’s site, this fantastic and imaginative mausoleum seems to have been built for James Kennedy Moorhead; it was designed by Louis Morgenroth and built in 1862, though Moorhead lived twenty-two years after that. The vegetation rising from the roof only adds to the mystery and romance, as if one had stumbled across a lost Gothic Khmer temple deep in the jungle. The name “Moorhead” appears over the door on one side, and “Murdoch” on the opposite side.
