The Tortorelli family monument in Calvary Cemetery is a huge rustic stone cross. This afternoon storm clouds were approaching behind it, and Father Pitt had to take pictures. Then he almost, but not quite, outran the rain.
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Old Rugged Cross
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Charles Taze Russell Grave and Pyramid
Father Pitt has just published this article on his Pittsburgh Cemeteries site, but he thought it might also be of interest to students of local history in general.
“Pastor Russell,” as his followers called him, founded the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society and the International Bible Students Association, the organization that—after various schisms and defections—came to be known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. He was born in Allegheny (now the North Side), and when he died he was buried in what is now (after a number of changes of ownership) the Rosemont, Mt. Hope, & Evergreen United Cemeteries in Ross Township.
His fairly modest grave monument includes a photograph of Pastor Russell, lovingly preserved (and perhaps replaced more than once over the years).
Note the inscription identifying Pastor Russell as the Laodicean Messenger, or “the angel of the church of the Laodiceans,” as the King James Bible translates it (Revelation 3:14). Russell’s followers believed that he himself was that angel or messenger.
Russell died in 1916. In 1921, some of his followers erected a showier monument in the form of a pyramid. One of Russell’s odd beliefs was that the Great Pyramid in Egypt was designed by God himself as a prophecy in stone. Like most such prophecies, it was meant to be uninterpretable until the correct clever interpreter came along—in this case, Pastor Russell.
This is actually one of the few cemetery pyramids in the Pittsburgh area whose proportions are Egyptian rather than classical Roman. It is meant to have the same proportions as the Great Pyramid, and in particular the capstone is carefully proportioned to match the Great Pyramid’s capstone, which in Pastor Russell’s interpretation represents the Christ.
The pyramid was meant as a marker not only for Russell, but for a number of other members of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, who owned this plot in the cemetery. A few names are inscribed in the open Bibles on the four sides of the pyramid, but most of the blank space was never used. It seems that the separate ownership of this plot has been preserved through the various changes of ownership the rest of the cemetery has gone through.
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A Fawn
The adorability meter just broke, shattered into atoms by readings it was never meant to handle. This little fawn was resting against a monument in the Rosemont, Mt. Hope, & Evergreen United Cemeteries. Deer love cemeteries, both because there is practically unlimited forage and because no one ever molests them there.
Camera: Konica-Minolta DiMAGE Z3.
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Remembering Those Who Served in the Civil War
The Civil War monument in Richland Cemetery, Dravosburg. The sculpture bears a maker’s plaque: “Manufactured by the W. H. Mullins Co., Salem, Ohio, U.S.A.”
Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.
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Memorial Day
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Henry Aiken Cross, Homewood Cemetery
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Penn Avenue Gatehouse, Allegheny Cemetery
Old Pa Pitt has done his best to make this picture look like an old colored postcard. Henry A. Macomb won a design competition for this gatehouse, whose tower is clearly influenced by the tower of the Allegheny County Courthouse downtown. The entrance buildings were finished in 1889, just after the courthouse opened, and some last-minute changes to the tower were probably intended to make it look more like Richardson’s work on the courthouse.
Camera: Olympus E-20n.
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Deer in the Snow, Allegheny Cemetery
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Sphinx in the Snow
The Emil Winter mausoleum, a bit of Cecil B. De Mille Egyptian fantasy in the Allegheny Cemetery, was designed by John Russell Pope, architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives in Washington. It is almost an exact duplicate of the Woolworth mausoleum in Woodlawn, the Bronx, which means that—believe it or not—there are two of these things in the world. The sphinx guardians are probably its most striking feature.
Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.
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Shields Chapel and Mausoleum, Edgeworth
Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.
Camera: Samsung Digimax V4.
The Shields Chapel was built in 1868 as a Presbyterian church donated by Eliza Leet Shields, extremely rich person, on the grounds of her estate. After sitting vacant for a long time, it is now occupied by the second congregation of Grace Anglican Church.
Camera: Samsung Digimax V4.
Next to the church is what appears to be another church, immemorially ancient; but it is actually the Shields family mausoleum, built in 1893. Apparently no mere cemetery was classy enough for the Shields family. This is an enormous mausoleum, as big as a church, and in fact Grace Anglican’s congregation met in it before the Shields Chapel became available. There is space for thirty-six permanent residents here, of which number eighteen have already moved in.
Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.
