Alice O’Mara (1854-1895) keeps a stern eye on everything that goes on in this section of the cemetery. Mostly she scolds groundhogs.
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O’Mara Monument, Calvary Cemetery
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Harris Monument, Calvary Cemetery
A particularly tasteful statue of the Blessed Virgin was, when Father Pitt visited, pressed into service holding a twig wreath and a bouquet of artificial daisies. This unusual monument presides over a family plot of matching headstones. The earliest burial is “Our Geneva” (1883-1903), but from the style old Pa Pitt would guess that the monument is more likely to date from the death of her mother (1921) or father (1927).
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King Monument, Allegheny Cemetery
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA Probably a stock design, but a pleasingly artistic one, representing a half-finished Romanesque arch carved out of a rustic boulder. The effect is appropriately romantic, as if the sculptor himself had been interrupted by death in the middle of creating his masterpiece.
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Theodore F. Straub Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery
One wonders whether the neighbors think of the Straub mausoleum as bringing down the tone of the neighborhood. Among the architect-designed classical temples of the Pitcairns and Clemsons and so forth, here is a little Romanesque mausoleum that seems to be a dealer’s stock model; the William H. McCarthy mausoleum in Calvary Cemetery is identical, with the addition of a cross to suit Catholic taste. One likes to imagine the spirits of the very rich reacting the way they would react if they were still alive and their new neighbor announced that he was going to put up a very tasteful manufactured home on his lot.
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.
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Hipple Angel, Homewood Cemetery
An angel in high relief stands before a rustic boulder and drops lily flowers on the Hipples’ graves. The earliest burial in this plot seems to be Marion F. Hipple, who died in 1899, and that is a good guess at the date of this angel.
