A marble monument in what we might call folk-romantic style. The recording angel has been eroded by pollution and time, but it does not look as though it was ever a very skillful carving, Nevertheless, the whole effect of the monument is very pleasing.
The epitaph (a poem commonly found on monuments of the era) reads:
Dear mother, rest in quiet sleep,
While friends in sorrow o’er thee weep,
And here their heartfelt offerings bring
And near thy grave thy requiem sing.
The composite picture above is more than 75 megapixels. Expect about 22 megabytes of data if you click on it.
This is without a doubt the most spectacular Egyptian mausoleum in Pittsburgh. All the usual Egyptian elements are here, but the Winter mausoleum (1930)—whose colossal scale is hard to convey in a photograph—adds its own unique accessories. John Russell Pope, the famous beaux-arts architect, designed this mausoleum for banker Emil Winter—but “designed” is not really the right word here. The Woolworth mausoleum in Woodlawn, the Bronx, is nearly identical; Winter apparently saw it and told Pope “I want that,” and Pope gave it to him.
Mr. Winter’s amazing sphinxes bear an expression that old Pa Pitt can only describe as “snooty.”
The bronze door depicts Mr. Winter himself, large as life and in full Pharaonic regalia, about to set off for his journey into the afterlife. Even this is identical to the bronze door of the Woolworth mausoleum, except for the substitution of Mr. Winter’s face.
Inside is a stained-glass window that reminds Father Pitt of cheap illustrated Sunday-school handouts, showing Mr. Winter properly enthroned. (It was devilishly hard to get a picture of this window, because the front doors are actually backed by a mesh screen. This was the best old Pa Pitt could do.)
Thomas Ridgeway Holmes was born in 1816 and died in 1859, and that is the sum of what Father Pitt knows about him. He has no presence on the Internet, as far as Google can tell—except an occasional reference to this monument. But he must have been rather wealthy: his monument suggests that he dealt in shipping and in geared and belted machines of some sort—a sawmill, perhaps? The reliefs are eroded, but it looks like a circular saw to the left of the second picture below. Is the hexagon a ship’s wheel? Then perhaps his business was shipbuilding, and it all fits together.
A particularly tasteful monument from 1924. The classical form might be almost severe, but the lettering gives us a hint of Art Deco, and the bronze angel seems very inviting. “Major McCandless likes it on the other side,” the angel seems to say. “I think you will, too.”
This octagonal shaft includes a very unusual portrait head of the Rev. Mr. Walther, along with an open book on which there is an inscription that Father Pitt could not quite read. The date of birth appears to be 1784, but old Pa Pitt could not make out the date of death. The style of the monument is of the 1860s or so, and one suspects that this is one of the monuments moved here when the cemetery moved from Troy Hill. (The Smithfield Cemetery was originally downtown; it moved to Troy Hill in 1860 and to its final home in 1886—thus the name “Smithfield East End Cemetery,” to distinguish this location from its former locations.)
