A monument for a girl who died at the age of fourteen. The weathered and damaged angel is probably much more picturesque in this condition than it was when it was new.
The base includes a photograph that is badly faded, but with the help of modern image-editing software we can restore a recognizable image.
There is nothing else remotely like this in Pittsburgh. This huge mausoleum supports a towering shaft with a recording angel at the top taking notes. It was designed by Theophilus P. Chandler Jr. (which always sounds to old Pa Pitt like the name of the villain in a Marx Brothers farce), the tastemaker of Philadelphia, and the architect of First Presbyterian Church downtown.
Louis Knoepp died in 1895 at the age of 40, and either he had already made enough of a fortune that this expense seemed appropriate to his heirs, or he came from a family with plenty of money already. The amateurish allegorical wreath-bearing statue on top suggests a client with more money than taste, but if the message to be delivered was that Louis Knoepp was the richest man in the cemetery, then the message has been delivered. Old Pa Pitt suspects that this monument was chosen from a monument dealer’s illustrated catalogue, forcing the monument dealer to come up with a monument he had never actually expected to have to build for anyone.
The weathered face of this mourner looks all the more contemplative for the eroded vagueness of her features. The names of the various Pottses are inscribed on a broken column, a common metaphor for death in cemeteries. The various parts of the monument seem to have been ordered separately and with little regard for consistent style; we know from seeing her in other cemeteries that the flower-strewing mourner (whose hands always break off) was a standard catalogue item, and the classical column seems an odd match for the rustic base.
Golden winter sun illuminates the Sunshine mausoleum in the South Side Cemetery.
