The Art and Architecture of Death
This plot bears the name “Trautman” on the threshold, but there are no memorials of any kind inside it. Old Pa Pitt wonders whether any Trautmans are actually buried here; sometimes a plot is bought and then left empty when the buyer moves elsewhere. At any rate, there is something admirable about the defiant squareness of this plot in a landscape that does not reward rectilinear thinking.
Since this is a Catholic cemetery, the obelisk has a cross on it; we seldom find an obelisk in a Catholic cemetery without this explicit depaganization.
As usual with zinc monuments, this one is nearly as fresh as the day it was put up. There are identical inscribed panels on both sides.
The mausoleum and statue are both stock items, but good ones, although the mausoleum does give the impression of having been assembled from a kit of mass-produced parts.
This mausoleum and its stone mourner are doubtless both standard catalogue items. But they are picturesque, and much more so because of the deep blackness of the stone. Most stone buildings in Pittsburgh used to look like this, but few of them have escaped cleaning.
The other thing that makes the mausoleum stand out, of course, is the delightful name “Sunshine” over the door.
A more artistic stump than usual, with a particularly well-done inscription.
An unusual Romanesque design, though with a little point at the top of the arch to suggest the Gothic in case you don’t like Romanesque.
This is the only mausoleum in the cemetery, a typical small rusticated-stone mausoleum. Originally it would have had bronze doors, but those are usually stolen from an unguarded cemetery and sold to scrap dealers who obviously have no idea where two men with a pickup truck might have got a large door-shaped chunk of bronze.
Leslie C. Steen died in 1867 at the age of 20, according to cemetery records. We may presume that this ponderous and weighty Gothic-classical monument was put up by his parents.
