Philotus Dean was a beloved high-school principal, unlikely as that sounds, who died at the age of forty-nine. The extensive inscription on his monument tells the rest of the tale.
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Philotus Dean Obelisk, Union Dale Cemetery
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Schreiner Mausoleum, Union Dale Cemetery
One of the largest and most elaborate mausoleums in Pittsburgh, this pile of classical Ionic detailing is topped by a statue of Hope shaking her fist at the heavens. The Schreiners must have been a very wealthy family, but they leave very little trace on the Internet, and (rather absurdly) do not even appear in the Union Dale Cemetery’s own list of “Notables.”
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Brick Monument, Beechview German Lutheran Cemetery
This strange combination of symbols stands out as the oddest monument in the not-quite-forgotten German Lutheran cemetery in Beechview. The cemetery is mowed a few times a year in a haphazard fashion, with many of the graves now entirely engulfed by woods, and most of the rest surrounded by weeds; we were fortunate to arrive when the weeds had recently been given their annual trimming. Fred and Carolina Brick are remembered on a scroll in front of a draped rustic seat on top of a cushion sitting on a tree stump, with a calla and a fern in front.
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Christian Wilbert Mausoleum, Mount Lebanon Cemetery
The very rich had their mausoleums designed for them by famous architects. The merely adequately rich ordered their mausoleums from a catalogue. We can say with some confidence that this attractive but undistinguished Romanesque mausoleum is a stock model because it is identical, including the statue, to the Braun mausoleum in the South Side Cemetery.
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Mellon Mausoleum, Homewood Cemetery
By some standards the richest family in the world, the Mellons preferred good taste to ostentation in this simple Doric temple, built for James Ross Mellon, who died in 1934. The sculpture in front, “Motherless” by George A. Lawson (1897), actually doesn’t memorialize any particular dead Mellon; it was a piece of garden statuary that James Ross Mellon liked, but his heirs didn’t want in their garden.
Section 14
Lot 97
