Cemeteries for All Souls’ Eve

What better way to remember all the saints than with a few of Father Pitt’s favorite cemetery pictures?

The Becker memorial in an old German cemetery in Beechview.

A model of the Pantheon, at only slightly reduced scale, in the Allegheny Cemetery.

An octagonal Gothic mausoleum in the Allegheny Cemetery.

A row of tombstones in the Allegheny Cemetery takes on an air of mystery, thanks to a seventy-year-old lens.

The door of the Winter mausoleum in the Allegheny Cemetery shows Mr. Winter as an Egyptian pharaoh about to depart for his journey to the underworld.

Early and Often

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The Eberhardt and Ober brewery in Dutchtown was a Pittsburgh institution. Its beer was affectionately known as E & O—for “Early & Often,” as the advertisements put it. Mr. Eberhardt and Mr. Ober now rest side by side in the Allegheny Cemetery in matching but not identical mausoleums.

Pantheon and Parthenon

If you simply can’t settle for less, why not rest eternally in a replica of one of the world’s most famous monuments? These impressive memorials are in the Allegheny Cemetery.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

German Lutheran Cemetery in Beechview

In the nineteenth century, churches usually built their cemeteries outside the city. At the turn of the twentieth, when the rapidly expanding streetcar lines triggered a storm of new development all around Pittsburgh, many of those cemeteries ended up surrounded by crowded urban neighborhoods. This one in Beechview is not quite forgotten; someone comes to mow it two or three times a year, but much of it is so overgrown by now that it’s immune to the mower.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Pond in the Allegheny Cemetery

Death is certainly worthwhile if the reward of it is this ideal romantic landscape.

Egyptian Revival

The style of architecture called Egyptian Revival had its heyday in the 1920s. In Pittsburgh it is almost always associated with death: we find it especially in mausoleums and in memorial dealers. The style always teeters on the edge of kitsch unless, as here, it is handled with restraint and taste. The setting of this mausoleum, under the shade of mighty trees, gives it a calm dignity it probably didn’t have when it was built.

Tombstones of the Romantic Era

“Romantic” is a vague term, but in the Allegheny Cemetery there is a certain class of tombstones for which no other adjective seems appropriate. Asymmetry and an imitation in stone of forms from the vegetable kingdom are their distinguishing traits.

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The Wilkins family monument crosses the line from simple romanticism into morbid romanticism. It depicts the Wilkins family as a tree trunk, with each deceased member as a branch cut off from the trunk. The metaphor, if carried to its logical conclusion, suggests that the family is extinct, leaving nothing but a dead stump. But someone must have paid for that monument, which is really quite colossal in person.

Memorial of Oliver Ormsby

The Ormsby family were early settlers in the little town of Pittsburgh, coming here in 1768, when their son Oliver was only about a year old. Oliver spent the rest of his life here, and was buried in Trinity Churchyard with a memorial that shows how much wealth he had accumulated in that time. The inscription reads thus:

ERECTED
To the Memory of
OLIVER ORMSBY
Son of John Ormsby
born at Bedford, Pa. Feb. 23, 1767
removed in 1768 to Pittsburgh where he
resided until the period of his decease
the 28th of July A.D. 1832,
leaving to his afflicted family
(who were prematurely bereaved by an
all wise Providence of a devoted father)
a character of unblemished Purity
a fountain flowing with streams
of the noblest virtues for their instruction.
O best of Parents
Long for thee thy Children’s tears shall flow.
Long shall their bosoms heave with woe.
But thanks to our Almighty Father
we mourn not as those without hope
looking with the eyes of faith
for a reunion of our once happy family
in the regions of bliss,
where the spirits of the dust are perfected
through Christ Jesus our Lord.

Trinity Churchyard

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Pittsburgh’s earliest settlers are buried downtown in the churchyard of Trinity Cathedral, the Episcopal cathedral of Pittsburgh (or at least the cathedral of some Anglican diocese, though which one may be up in the air right now). Next door is First Presbyterian, another colonial-era congregation, and across the street is the Duquesne Club, forming a perfect triangle of old money.

Trinity Churchyard is half a block up Sixth Avenue from the Wood Street subway station.

A Stroll through Allegheny Cemetery

A short stroll in the snow through an enchanted landscape filled with fantastic temples, angels, and cold beauties with warm hearts.