Suter mausoleum gets new life

By ERIC SEIVERLING

eseiverling@yourmvi.com

The structure that has housed the remains of Sutersville’s founder for 116 years will soon get a facelift.

Entombed with his wife and three other people in West Newton Cemetery, Eli Suter’s mausoleum is undergoing a renovation that will enhance the mostly sandstone structure.

The cemetery’s board of directors recently decided to move forward with the renovations after seeing the damage years of western Pennsylvania winters had done to the mausoleum that houses Suter, the founder of Sutersville in Westmoreland County.

“One stone was cardboard thin,” said West Newton Cemetery manager Ben Markle. “Our cemetery board of directors decided to pony up the budget to shore up the structure. It already looks a lot better, but we want to make it really nice. It gives this mausoleum an extra chapter.”

Phase one of the renovations began last week when Turkeytown-based mason Art Cochenour began cutting and replacing stones, sealing the roof and installing new mortar joints. According to Cochenour, the inside of the mausoleum looked like “a bomb had exploded” due to the structure being vandalized nearly a century ago.

“It’s like a puzzle,” he said while taking a break from working on the site. “You tear it apart and then you put it back together. It’s a lost art.”

The mausoleum is the resting site for Suter and his wife, Mary, and their sons Michael and Charles, who was the final person to be entombed in the structure in 1927. Another family member is believed to be in the structure, but the identity is not known.

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