There are some wonderful monuments that feature a symbolic empty chair.
Tag Archives: Glenwood Cemetery
Thou knotty Celtic cross!
Knotical-Rustical-Uncical-Celtical wonder in Glenwood Cemetery, D.C.
Schäflein
A Moravian hymn graces the monument of little Luther Campbell in Glenwood Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Iambs flowing from the Fawcett
No Wooden poetry here but pure iambs flowing from the Fawcett: John Fawcett, that is.
Decalog
A tombstone with the full text of the Ten Commandments and maybe then some. No craziness there, nosiree!
The Maria Scheuch portrait in Glenwood Cemetery
Maria Scheuch gazes out impassively at us from her funerary portrait in Glenwood Cemetery.
Olde school!
Old weathered tombstones are by turns heartbreaking and annoying. But you can see why people were enamored of them when you come across a crisp, fresh example.
The life beyond
A fascinatingly literal conceit on an otherwise handsome obelisk monument.
The all-seeing eye!
A monstrous surprise awaited me at Glenwood Cemetery today.
TFW?!
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a mausoleum, in Glenwood Cemetery in Washington, D.C., designed by a spooney architect (figure 1). Figure 1. Spooney mausoleum. Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D.C. Photo: author. Now before I go an inch further, let me concede that if you ignore the details and slip the image a little out of focus, …
Funerary portraits to order
The reader may know that I am looking into American funerary portraits. Searching turns up a fair number of them, but there is always a question of whether portrait statues or busts in the wild were made for the tomb or were repurposed from a domestic setting. It’s therefore time to touch base with theory, …
P.M.G.
Joseph Peck monument, Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D.C. Photo: author. I note first that the marker has been vandalized in the past and carefully restored. Who vandalizes a grave? P GMERECTED BY HIS COMRADESTHE PRESIDENT’S MOUNTED GUARDIN MEMORYOFENSIGN JOS. CHAP. PECKWHO DEPARTED THIS LIFESEPTR 1ST 1857IN THE 24TH YEAR OF HIS AGE There doesn’t seem to be …
The artist, the grave, and the sonnet
Figure 1. Augustus Goodyear Heaton. Frontispiece photo from Fancies in Thoughts and Verse (Boston 1904). Public domain. Digitized by Google, in the internet archive. Augustus Goodyear Heaton, a.k.a. Augustus George Heaton, had his middle name legally changed at the age of 78 in 1922. Born in Philadelphia in 1844, he passed much of his career …
The Victor Blundon and Mr. Knickers portrait
Blundon monument, Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D.C. Photo: author. Apart from the Schnebels, who died decades earlier, the burials here fall in the period from 1936 to 1959. The first of the “modern burials” is that of Victor, who takes the siege d’honneur in the bas relief, and whose death presumably occasioned the commission of the …
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Hard Knox
George William Knox monument, Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D.C. Photo: author. Let’s look at this monument before we consider the man, except to date the monument to the period probably soon after his death in March 1892. The monument is run-of-the-mill bog standard for the 1890s, an obelisk influenced both by the Egyptian revival and the …
Vernacular monuments II
Pietro Cordani monument, Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D.C. Photo: author QUI RIPOSAPIETROCORDANIN[ato]. 1909 M[orto]. 1911 Here liesPietroCordaniB[orn] 1909 D[ied] 1911 Once again we find a cast slab of concrete with visible aggregate. I see a crude cross above the inserted inscription, and it seems to me that the inscription is on a ticket that was poured …
The Mary L. Allen mausoleum portraits
Mary L. Allen mausoleum, Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D.C. Photo: author. Aside from the brief anagraphic snippet on an infant’s monument given below, I know little about Mary L. Allen. I think I know that she was born in Ohio in 1850, that she died in 1924, and that she is buried in the mausoleum shown …
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