Iron baron Alexander McBurney Byers (1827–1900) and his family are buried in a mausoleum very closely modeled after the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens.
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Byers Mausoleum, Allegheny Cemetery
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Eaton-Brown-Fleming Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery
It took a bit of money to raise an authentic peripteral Doric temple like this. (“Peripteral” means having columns all the way around.)
One sooty corner of the mausoleum also memorializes Pittsburgh’s industrial past.
More pictures are here.
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Byers Mausoleum, Allegheny Cemetery
If you want to be remembered as a man of taste, you should be entombed in the Parthenon, or something very like it. This is very similar, but not identical, to the Eaton mausoleum in the Homewood Cemetery. Both are very correct Doric temples, bearing an even stronger resemblance to the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens than to the Parthenon. Alexander McBurney Byers was a titan of the iron industry, which you would never guess from this pristine white temple.
