Arthur and Alfreda Antignani mausoleum, Allegheny County Memorial Park, Allison Park

The granite mausoleum stands alone inside a marquee plot surrounded by a thin circular cemetery road. A long stretch of musical staff wraps the perimeter with twenty-some bars of melody notation spelled-out; vertical fence posts serve double-duty as measure lines.

Two six-foot-tall ornamental saxophones flank the doorway; a third marks the crest of the roof. Palm to forehead, one can squint through the gauzy haze inside to the mausoleum’s stained glass window. There, a backlit treble clef symbol glows where one might normally expect the image of an angel or flowers^[1]. The footpath out front is yet another gigantic saxophone, this one rendered minimally in two dimensions on red-brown granite tile. The entrance step is engraved “All the Way”.

Saxophone ornament, Antignani mausoleum

All the Way could–and should–be the title of Arthur and Alfreda Antignani‘s bio-pic. The couple lived large in a Hampton hilltop property they built for themselves and named Skyvue Estate. Our story on what remained of that shag-carpeted, double-bedazzled, rhinestone-encrusted, tchotchke-strewn, twenty-four hour party palace and its grounds [Graceland North: The Antignani Estate Sale, 4 Nov. 2015] is one of the most-read Orbit stories of all time. Though the Antignanis have left this particular stage, we thought it was high time to call for an encore and visit this fascinating couple in their final resting place.

Mausoleum stained glass window

That the Antignanis loved music should come as no surprise. Every inch of Skyvue Estate–from the guitar-shaped patio to the band of frog figurines jamming on the credenza–confirmed as much. So it is fitting that as Alfreda spent the very the last years of her life designing and planning the memorial^[2], she’d want the imagery of music–especially Arthur’s tenor saxophone–featured prominently.

The touch to include actual musical notation on the small fence–as opposed to any old clip art approximation of stray notes on a staff–was an inspired design decision. If you haven’t guessed by now, the melody is, of course, “All the Way”.

Saxophone-shaped tile walkway

“All the Way”, the Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen standard made famous by Ol’ Blue Eyes (among many others) is a classic tear-jerking ballad of life-long love. It may be a songwriting cliché, but a lyric like “Through the good or lean years, And for all the in between years” speaks not to the eros of so many pop songs and rom coms, but to the pragma and philia of a couple that spent over half a century together^[3] in what we can only imagine as one of the great eccentric long run romances of our time.

To Arthur and Alfreda Antignani, may you rest in peace, all the way.

Art & Al, R.I.P.

Getting there: The Antignani mausoleum is in Allegheny County Memorial Park, 1600 Duncan Ave., Allison Park. The cemetery has very few above-ground average-sized headstones (possibly none?) so the handful of large memorials/mausoleums stand out really easily–you won’t miss it.

[1] For comparison, see Allegheny Cemetery: Mausoleum Stained Glass, Pittsburgh Orbit, Oct. 12, 2016.
[2] “In life and death, eccentric Hampton couple makes beautiful music together”, TribLive.com, Dec. 5, 2015.
[3] The Antignanis were married and 1959 and Arthur died (first) in 2011.