Woodlawn Cemetery

From the Wilkinsburg Historical Society Archives: July 2016:

Woodlawn Cemetery was officially established February 28, 1903 at 1460 Penn Avenue in Wilkinsburg. However, there are some grave stones that date from 1878 and 1882. There are 37 acres of rolling hills. There are thousands of graves there, some with gravestones and some are unmarked.

One of the very first monuments placed in Woodlawn Cemetery is the statue of a Civil War soldier. It was placed about 1905 and originally had two cannons and a pyramid of cannon balls in front.

Many notable people are in Woodlawn Cemetery as their final resting place. Among them are:

Vernon Covell - a Wilkinsburg engineer who designed the George Westinghouse bridge and was chief engineer in the design of the 6th, 7th and 9th Street bridges over the Allegheny River

John Ralph McDowell - Representative in Congress and editor of the Wilkinsburg Gazette

Frank E. Bingaman - News photographer who started his career in a studio on Wilkinsburg’s Wood Street. In the early 1900s Bingaman captured images of Honus Wagner, Andrew Carnegie, President Taft, the 1936 flood in Pittsburgh, and innumerable Pittsburgh events.

Dr. Frank Conrad - Wilkinsburg electrical engineer whose early radio experiments led to the first commercial broadcasting and the establishment of the first radio station, KDKA.

Note that in 1938 the Lincoln Cemetery of Bedford Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Hill district was to be the site for the new Bedford Dwellings housing. This cemetery served the African American people of the Hill, and was relatively small, measuring 250 feet by 700 feet. The Lincoln Cemetery was dismantled and the interred burials were moved to the Woodlawn Cemetery in Wilkinsburg, with a marker stating “In Memoriam - Dedicated in honor of the persons who were buried in the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery - Bedford Ave. Pgh and whose remains were reinterred in this cemetery 1938”

Sources:

https://wilkinsburghistory.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/archives-july-2016.pdf