Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Sculpture

  • Warden Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    In some ways this is the oddest monument in the Allegheny Cemetery, though in that category it faces some very stiff competition. It is an Egyptian-style canopy of sandstone over a marble statue that has almost entirely disintegrated. In fact we know the name “Warden” only from the cemetery’s site. We can barely make out the words “Little George” under the remains of the statue.

    The Egyptian style is remarkable enough for the middle 1800s, but this monument is odder than the few other remnants of the first Egyptian revival. The pattern of holes in the sandstone seems to have been made by an amateur with too much time on his hands. The winged sun disk or scarab is the earliest occurrence of that symbol Father Pitt has found anywhere in Pittsburgh; it would later become ubiquitous on mausoleums of the second Egyptian Revival in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

  • Schoonmaker Monument, Homewood Cemetery

    A beautiful bronze angel lays a well-deserved palm on the monument to James Martinus Schoonmaker, who as a 22-year-old colonel in the Union Army led a charge that, years later, earned him the Medal of Honor. Of course, gallantry in combat does not bring in the sort of money that buys extraordinary works of art for one’s grave. That came from the coke industry and the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad.

  • Seiferth Monument, St. Paul’s Cemetery (Mount Oliver)

    Christ spreads his arms to bless thousands of residents of the southern city neighborhoods (and Mount Oliver, which is actually an independent enclave surrounded by the city of Pittsburgh). The monument is not as huge and imposing as the Louis Knoepp monument nearby, but the sculpture is much more artistic.

  • Louis Knoepp Monument, St. Paul’s Cemetery (Mount Oliver)

    Either Louis Knoepp made quite a bit of money in a short time (he died at forty), or he had a rich family who remembered him fondly. This monument towers over everything else in this little Lutheran cemetery; in scale it resembles some of the grander monuments in the Allegheny or Union Dale cemeteries. The statue on top, however, is not of the first quality; in fact, its proportions are a bit odd. The head is large and broad, and the neck is unnaturally thick.

    The style of the base is a bit hard to describe; it is classical with elements of Gothic.

    As if it were not enough to be more magnificent than anything else in the cemetery, the monument is also surrounded by an elegant stone wall to separate Mr. Knoepp from the riffraff around him.

  • Louis Beinhauer Sr. Monument, Smithfield East End Cemetery

    Mr. Beinhauer stands with his hand on a rustic stump in a pose reminiscent of advertisements for men’s ready-made clothing in the Pittsburgh German newspapers he might have read.