| Girod Street Cemetery | |
|---|---|
 Row of crypts in Girod Cemetery, 1885 | |
 | |
| Details | |
| Established | 1822 |
| Closed | 1940s |
| Location | central New Orleans |
The Girod Street Cemetery (also known as the Protestant Cemetery), was a large above-ground cemetery that resided in central New Orleans, Louisiana, established in 1822 for Protestant residents of the Faubourg St. Mary and was closed down in the 1940s. The cemetery then remained unused, until it was officially torn down on January 4, 1957.
It consisted of 2,319 wall vaults and approximately 1,100 tombs. As the cemetery was above ground with mostly wall vaults, and was located in what was considered a very “convenient” central area of the city, it had become used as a public burying ground to stack bodies, especially during epidemics. Notables interred there included Congressman Henry Adams Bullard, Zulu Social Club King Joseph J. Smith, [1] Lieutenant Colonel William Wallace Smith Bliss, and California governor John B. Weller.
There were multiple cases (usually during a major epidemic in the nineteenth century) of people getting in fights because people were over stacking the tombs and wall vaults, and they even had to stack bodies near the entrance because there were not enough people to bury the bodies. As it was described during the 1833 cholera epidemic “...the shrouded dead dumped at the gateway of the Girod Street Cemetery accumulated in such numbers that the entrance to its precincts was so obstructed that arriving bodies had to be deposited on the outside; no graves at this time could be dug; no coffins procurable, for there were neither grave diggers to be had nor undertakers to be found.” Because most of the bodies in the vaults were from epidemics, the site came to be known as the “yellow fever mound”.
Girod Street Cemetery was laid out along a central artery with side aisles, and was noted for its so-called "society tombs," which could rise seven or eight tiers above ground. [2] Societies of (former) slaves owned their own tombs: the First African Baptist Association, the Home Missionary Benevolent Society, and the Male and Female Lutheran Benevolent Society. The New Lusitanos Benevolent Association owned the largest society tomb in Girod Street Cemetery, which was designed by J.N.B. de Pouilly in 1859. [3]
In 1880, a commissioner of Louisiana inspected all the cemeteries of New Orleans. All of them were found to be in good condition except for the Girod Street Cemetery. Since the cemetery vaults had been built hastily with only a single layer of bricks, unpleasant odors of decay were constantly wafting out, but since there was no specific regulation against that, it was considered unimportant. However, the commissioner noted that “in the event of rain [Girod Street Cemetery] is always flooded to such an extent that it will affect the sanitary precautions necessary to prevent the contracting or spreading of any diseases,”. The commissioner deemed that the Girod Street Cemetery was unsanitary and recommended that it be shut down, but it appears that his recommendation was simply ignored.
By the early 1940s, the Girod Street Cemetery had run into further problems. It was run by the Christ Church Cathedral, and since the mid 1930s people had begun to use newer, better kept cemeteries in the local area. Since the cemetery catered specifically to deceased Protestants, who were in a minority locally, it fell into disuse and disrepair.
During this time the cemetery was subject to vandalism; tombs were found broken into and completely destroyed, a large fire was found burning atop one tomb, and a citizen reported that it looked more like a poultry farm, with many chickens randomly wandering the premises. In 1945 the Christ Church Cathedral tried again to help fix up the cemetery by placing notices on all of the tombs for the owners, saying that if they did not repair their property (the decrepit tombs) within 60 days, it would be demolished by the Church. With the cemetery by now a civic eyesore, in June 1948 under the orders of Mayor Chep Morrison, the cemetery was dismantled. He had people start hauling away bricks, disregarding the protests of the Christ Church Cathedral, and alerted citizens that they should retrieve the remains of loved ones. In October 1958 the remaining 96,000 square feet of the cemetery land were sold to the government for almost $300,000.
The cemetery land was deconsecrated on January 4, 1957. According to local historian Leonard Huber, between January and March 1957 the human remains were moved elsewhere on a racially segregated basis: the whites to Hope Mausoleum of New Orleans and the African Americans to Providence Memorial Park.
Caesars Superdome, Smoothie King Center, Benson Tower, Entergy Tower, and Energy Centre were eventually constructed near to, but not on, the cemetery site. A local superstition alleges that the notoriously poor record of the New Orleans Saints football team for many years was somehow supernaturally tied to the ground on which the dome was constructed. Since 2010, the Saints have gone to the playoffs 7 times and lost 7 times. However, several reliable historical sources indicate that the Superdome was not in fact built on the site of the former cemetery location, but on the former location of the Illinois Central Railroad roundhouse and shops. [4]
The former Girod Street Cemetery site is the current location of the parking garage for the New Orleans Centre shopping mall. [5] However, overlaying a Sanborn map over a current aerial image shows that the cemetery's location was directly underneath the New Orleans Centre and the Superdome's parking garage. [6]
Champions Square, an entertainment district of sports bars and other attractions, was built on the site. [7]
Catacombs are human-made underground passages primarily used for religious purposes, particularly for burial. Any chamber used as a burial place is considered a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman Empire.
The Basilica of Saint-Denis is a large former medieval abbey church and present cathedral in the commune of Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. The building is of singular importance historically and architecturally as its choir, completed in 1144, is widely considered the first structure to employ all of the elements of Gothic architecture.
Marie Catherine Laveau was a Louisiana Creole practitioner of Voodoo, herbalist and midwife who was renowned in New Orleans. Her daughter, Marie Laveau II, also practiced rootwork, conjure, Native American and African spiritualism as well as Louisiana Voodoo and traditional Roman Catholicism. An alternate spelling of her name, Laveaux, is considered by historians to be from the original French spelling.
Saint Louis Cemetery is the name of three Catholic cemeteries in New Orleans, Louisiana. Most of the graves are above-ground vaults constructed in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Caesars Superdome, commonly known as the Superdome, is a domed multi-purpose stadium located in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It is the home stadium of the New Orleans Saints of the National Football League (NFL).
Smoothie King Center is a multi-purpose indoor arena in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is located in the city's Central Business District, adjacent to Caesars Superdome. The arena opened in 1999 as New Orleans Arena and has been home to the New Orleans Pelicans of the National Basketball Association (NBA) since 2002. The New Orleans VooDoo of the Arena Football League played their home games in the arena from 2004 until the team disbanded in 2008. The VooDoo resumed play at the arena in March 2011, until after the 2015 AFL season when the franchise folded.
The Central Business District (CBD) is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.
Grave robbery, tomb robbing, or tomb raiding is the act of uncovering a grave, tomb or crypt to steal commodities. It is usually perpetrated to take and profit from valuable artefacts or personal property. A related act is body snatching, a term denoting the contested or unlawful taking of a body, which can be extended to the unlawful taking of organs alone.
As the center of Hurricane Katrina passed southeast of New Orleans on August 29, 2005, winds downtown were in the Category 1 range with frequent intense gusts. The storm surge caused approximately 23 breaches in the drainage canal and navigational canal levees and flood walls. As mandated in the Flood Control Act of 1965, responsibility for the design and construction of the city’s levees belongs to the United States Army Corps of Engineers and responsibility for their maintenance belongs to the Orleans Levee District. The failures of levees and flood walls during Katrina are considered by experts to be the worst engineering disaster in the history of the United States. By August 31, 2005, 80% of New Orleans was flooded, with some parts under 15 feet (4.6 m) of water. The famous French Quarter and Garden District escaped flooding because those areas are above sea level. The major breaches included the 17th Street Canal levee, the Industrial Canal levee, and the London Avenue Canal flood wall. These breaches caused the majority of the flooding, according to a June 2007 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The flood disaster halted oil production and refining which increased oil prices worldwide.
The Pontchartrain Expressway is a parallel six-lane section of Interstate 10 (I-10) and U.S. Route 90 Business in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, with a brief stand-alone section in between junctions with these highways. The designation begins on I-10 near the Orleans–Jefferson parish line at the I-610 Split. The expressway follows I-10 into the Central Business District (CBD) of New Orleans and then follows US 90 Bus. to the Crescent City Connection. The expressway takes its name from Pontchartrain Boulevard, which the expressway replaced in some areas. The Pontchartrain name is derived from Lake Pontchartrain, which New Orleans' northern border traverses.
A burial vault is a structural stone or brick-lined underground tomb or 'burial chamber' for the interment of a single body or multiple bodies underground. The main difference between entombment in a subterranean vault and a traditional in-ground burial is that the coffin is not placed directly in the earth, but is placed in a burial chamber specially built for this purpose. A burial vault refers to an underground chamber, in contrast to an above-ground, freestanding mausoleum. These underground burial tombs were originally and are still often vaulted and usually have stone slab entrances. They are often privately owned and used for specific family or other groups, but usually stand beneath a public religious building, such as a church, or in a churchyard or cemetery. A crypt may be used as a burial vault and a freestanding mausoleum may contain a burial vault beneath the ground.
Nicolas Girod or Nicholas Girod was the fifth mayor of New Orleans, from late in 1812 to September 4, 1815. He was the first mayor of the city after Louisiana entered into the Union as a state.
St. Patrick's Church is a Catholic church and parish in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The parish was founded in 1833, and the current structure was completed in 1840. It is the second-oldest parish in New Orleans, located upriver from the French Quarter at 724 Camp Street in what is now the Central Business District. The building, a National Historic Landmark, is one of the nation's earliest and finest examples of Gothic Revival architecture.
The Louisiana Superdome was used as a "shelter of last resort" for those in New Orleans unable to evacuate from the city when Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, 2005.
A receiving vault or receiving tomb, sometimes also known as a public vault, is a structure designed to temporarily store dead bodies in winter months when the ground is too frozen to dig a permanent grave in a cemetery. Technological advancements in excavation, embalming, and refrigeration have rendered the receiving vault obsolete.
Champions Square is an outdoor festival plaza located adjacent to Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is known as the premier tailgating space for sports events held at the stadium and the nearby Smoothie King Center.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
The Presbyterian Burying Ground, also known as the Old Presbyterian Burying Ground, was a historic cemetery which existed between 1802 and 1909 in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was one of the most prominent cemeteries in the city until the 1860s. Burials there tapered significantly after Oak Hill Cemetery was founded nearby in 1848. The Presbyterian Burying Ground closed to new burials in 1887, and about 500 to 700 bodies were disinterred after 1891 when an attempt was made to demolish the cemetery and use the land for housing. The remaining graves fell into extensive disrepair. After a decade of effort, the District of Columbia purchased the cemetery in 1909 and built Volta Park there, leaving nearly 2,000 bodies buried at the site. Occasional human remains and tombstones have been discovered at the park since its construction. A number of figures important in the early history of Georgetown and Washington, D.C., military figures, politicians, merchants, and others were buried at Presbyterian Burying Ground.
Willie Mae's Scotch House is a restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2005 it was named an America's Classic by the James Beard Foundation.
The Historic Cemeteries of New Orleans, New Orleans, United States, are a group of forty-two cemeteries that are historically and culturally significant. These are distinct from most cemeteries commonly located in the United States in that they are an amalgam of the French, Spanish, and Caribbean historical influences on the city of New Orleans in addition to limitations resulting from the city's high water table. The cemeteries reflect the ethnic, religious, and socio-economic heritages of the city. Architecturally, they are predominantly above ground tombs, family tombs, civic association tombs, and wall vaults, often in neo-classical design and laid out in regular patterns similar to city streets. They are at times referred to colloquially as “Cities of the Dead”, and some of the historic cemeteries are tourist destinations.
| Topics | |
|---|---|
| Government | |
| Colleges and Universities | |
| Sports |
|
| Festivals | |
