Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Obelisks

  • Sellers Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    Cemetery records tell us that Sellers burials here go back to Benjamin C. Sellers, who died in 1830; he would have been moved from one of the cemeteries downtown when the Allegheny Cemetery opened in 1845. It is possible, therefore, that this is one of the earliest generation of monuments in the cemetery. The form is a little unusual; it might be described as an octagonal obelisk. Octagons had a bit of a fad in architecture of all sorts in the early to middle 1800s, and several of the older monuments in the cemetery—most notably the Moorhead mausoleum from 1862—are octagonal.

    As a practical matter, too, an octagonal base gives you twice as many sides for inscriptions as a square base, and the Sellers family certainly got their money’s worth from this monument.

  • William F. McGregor Obelisk, Allegheny Cemetery

    William F. McGregor (old Pa Pitt looked the full name up in the cemetery records) was killed at the battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia, in 1864. His obelisk includes an ornament with a rifle and (perhaps) a flag; the marble is eroded, and it is hard to make out the details. Try your hand at it: click on the image, and you’ll get a picture at 12-megapixel resolution.

    With a thin coating of snow everywhere, the light on this january morning was glorious.

  • McKinney Obelisk, Sewickley Cemetery

    A classic marble obelisk in memory of the Rev. David McKinney, who died in 1879. The inscription is still very clear; the epitaph, which was much more shallowly cut, is almost obliterated, but enough remains to recognize it as 1 Corinthians 15:57:

    But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

  • Coffin Obelisk, South Side Cemetery

    A heavily shrouded obelisk from about 1880, the drapery rendered in a chunky and abstract fashion. Old Pa Pitt sometimes wonders whether there is a certain amount of giggling at the undertaker’s whenever a customer named Coffin comes in.

  • Daniel Berg Obelisk, South Side Cemetery

    A simple and tasteful marble obelisk from 1877, made more attractive by the gradual erosion of the stone. In spite of the erosion, the inscription is still very clear.