Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Relief

  • Winter Mausoleum, Allegheny Cemetery

    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.”

    2013-08-18-Allegheny-Cemetery-Winter-04The 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.

    2013-08-18-Allegheny-Cemetery-Winter-01Inside 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.)

    2013-08-18-Allegheny-Cemetery-Winter-03

  • Thomas Ridgeway Holmes Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    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.

  • McCandless-Johnston Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    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.”

  • Reverend Charles Walther Monument, Smithfield East End Cemetery

    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.)

  • Calbraith Perry Rodgers Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    In 1911, Calbraith Perry Rodgers became the first man to fly across the continent of North America, from Atlantic to Pacific—even though he had made his very first flight only a few months earlier. He flew a Wright Model EX biplane called the Vin Fiz Flyer, after the soda pop that sponsored his trip. The plane is immortalized in bronze on this monument (and the plane itself can be seen in the Air and Space Museum, Washington).

    This was not a nonstop flight; it would be a long time before planes capable of flying that distance were built. There were 75 stops, of which 16 were technically crashes. But it was an epochal event in aviation; it showed, only eight years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, that airplanes had matured to the point where practical long-distance travel was possible. The inscription tells the story of the flight.

    Only the date of death tells the end of the story: the next year, in 1912, Rodgers became the first man to die in an airplane collision with a flock of birds. Even in death, he was a pioneer.