The Romanesque style and the sooty blackness of the stone make this mausoleum look particularly Pittsburghy. The Theodore F. Straub mausoleum in the Homewood Cemetery is identical (but without the cross), so this was probably a dealer’s standard model.
The statue on top seems to be a version of that very popular flower-strewing mourner who appears in many of our cemeteries, usually handless if she is at ground level; compare the Aul, Potts, Alexander H. King, Baxmyer, and Nickel monuments.
This Romanesque sarcophagus looks particularly elegant with its details outlined in good old Pittsburgh soot.
Section: 2
Lot: 14
Mr. Shields decided to take his favorite pinup girl with him to the grave. A stout wooden beam apparently holding up the ceiling of the mausoleum stands in the way of the view of this window; Father Pitt has therefore stitched this picture together from two separate pictures, and the seam is obvious. But the window is unusual enough that we can tolerate a substandard photograph. —UPDATE: Old Pa Pitt has accidentally found out quite a bit more about this window. It is called “The Spirit of the Water Lily,” and it was designed by the famous stained-glass artist William Willet for the home of one of Pittsburgh’s rich industrialists, George I. Whitney. How it came to be in this mausoleum Father Pitt does not know. The design for the window was printed in the February, 1904, issue of the Booklovers Magazine, and we note that, if this drawing is accurate, the window is currently installed backwards:
