Can a cemetery really be worth an afternoon of your time if nobody you know is buried there? I used to think that was a strange question. Then I spent a rainy Saturday morning wandering Allegheny Cemetery in Lawrenceville, and I’ve been recommending it to people ever since.
The cemetery opened in 1844, and at 300 acres it’s one of the largest historic burial grounds in Pennsylvania. But the reason to go isn’t genealogy or gothic tourism — it’s the sheer, uncanny beauty of the place. On a wet October morning, the light comes through the old oaks and maples in a way that makes everything look like a 19th-century landscape painting that somehow got left outside.
You enter off Penn Avenue near the border of Lawrenceville and Garfield. There’s no admission fee. You can walk straight in, grab a map from the office if it’s open (usually weekdays), and just go. Most people I’ve brought here say the same thing after the first ten minutes: they didn’t expect it to feel this calm.
The roads inside wind and loop in the old rural cemetery tradition — the designers clearly wanted you to wander rather than march in a straight line. There are hills, ravines, a small pond, and enough elevation change to make your legs know they did something by the time you’re done. A full loop of the main grounds is probably two to three miles, depending on how many side paths you follow. I always follow the side paths.
What stops you along the way are the monuments. Some are enormous — obelisks, mausoleums with columns, carved angels that have gone beautifully mossy over 150 years. Others are simple and small. Stephen Foster, who wrote ‘Oh! Susanna’ and ‘Beautiful Dreamer,’ is buried here. So is Josh Gibson, the Negro Leagues legend. There’s a section of Civil War veterans. The variety of stonecutting styles across different eras turns the whole place into an accidental museum of American funerary art, which sounds morbid but isn’t — it’s genuinely fascinating in the way that old things made with great care tend to be.
The wildlife is another reason to come. I’ve seen red-tailed hawks, a great blue heron near the pond, and more species of migratory warblers in one spring morning than I’d seen anywhere else in the city. Birders know this spot. If you come in early May with binoculars and patience, you’ll understand why.
Practically speaking: wear shoes you don’t mind getting muddy if it’s been raining. The paved interior roads are fine, but the grass paths get soft. There’s parking along the internal drives, and the Penn Avenue entrance is accessible by several Port Authority bus routes if you’re coming from downtown or the East End. The office can give you a printed map and a guide to notable graves — worth grabbing if you want context for what you’re seeing.
It costs nothing. It asks only that you slow down a little. On a gray Pittsburgh morning when you’re not sure what to do with yourself, that turns out to be exactly the right amount.
