Homewood Cemetery was established in 1878 on approximately 175 acres that had formerly been part of the East End estate of William Wilkins. It was created to provide a suitable burial place for the eastern section of Pittsburgh. From its founding, Homewood was a non-denominational and non-discriminatory cemetery, serving Pittsburgh residents across religious and cultural communities. Developed as a lawn-park cemetery, Homewood reflected a late nineteenth-century movement toward more uniform and naturalistic cemetery landscapes than those associated with the earlier rural cemetery tradition.
Homewood's lawn-park design emphasized open vistas, broad lawns, and a more streamlined landscape than the denser plantings and elaborate layouts associated with earlier rural cemeteries. William Allen, superintendent of the cemetery from 1907 to 1935, had previously worked at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and incorporated aspects of rural cemetery landscape design into Homewood's grounds. Some trees from the former estate of William Wilkins, which became the site of Homewood Cemetery, were retained as the landscape developed.
The cemetery's principal entrance complex was erected in 1923 and designed by architects Colbert T. A. MacClure and Albert H. Spahr. It includes a Gothic Revival chapel and a Tudor Revival gatehouse and administration building. Homewood also contains numerous late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century family mausoleums, including Romanesque Revival and Beaux-Arts examples associated with prominent Pittsburgh families. Among the cemetery's distinctive funerary monuments is the pyramid mausoleum of William Harry Brown and his family, a 35-foot Egyptian-inspired structure that became one of Homewood's recognizable landmarks. The cemetery has been a designated arboretum since 2014; more than 40 species of trees are represented throughout the grounds.
Preservation and interpretation
The Homewood Cemetery Historical Fund was established on July 11, 1989, as a nonprofit organization to promote the appreciation and preservation of the cemetery's cultural, historical, and natural resources. The fund has supported preservation and restoration projects, historical documentation, and public interpretation of the cemetery. In 2010, a yearlong project documented the stained-glass windows and architecture of Homewood's private family mausoleums, producing more than 460 photographs that became part of the cemetery's records.
Chinese burial section
Beginning in 1901, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association purchased and organized burial lots in Section 3 of Homewood Cemetery for members of Pittsburgh's Chinese community. Approximately 250 Chinese Americans are buried in the area. The lots were originally intended for temporary burials, reflecting a practice in which remains could later be disinterred and returned to China for reburial with family ancestors. A 1937 United Press report, for example, described the planned burial of William Yic at Homewood for ten years before his remains were to be removed and sent to China. Additional adjoining lots were acquired in 1903, 1918, and 1929, but many burials became permanent when repatriation was not possible. In 2018, a grant from the Hillman Foundation supported the restoration and resetting of nearly 200 markers in the section.
↑Richardson, James B. III; Carlisle, Ronald C. (1980). "The Archaeological Significance of Mausoleums". Markers: The Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies. 1. University Press of America: 159. Retrieved September 6, 2026.
↑Wecht, Ben (January 11, 2021). "Where the Dead Go". Pittsburgh Quarterly. Retrieved September 6, 2026.
