Girod Street Cemetery

The Girod Street Cemetery (also known as the Protestant Cemetery) was a large above-ground cemetery that resided in New Orleans, Louisiana established in 1822 for Protestant residents of the Faubourg St. Mary and was closed down in the year 1940 and the bodies were moved elsewhere.(It was officially torn down on January 4, 1957.) It consisted of 2,319 wall vaults and approximately 1,100 tombs. Even though that may seem like a lot, because the cemetery was above ground with mostly wall vaults, and was located in what was considered a very “convenient” area, many people used it as a public burying ground to stack bodies, especially when there was an epidemic. 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 they didn’t have 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”.

Row of crypts in Girod Cemetery, 1885

Girod 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 Cemetery, which was designed by J.N.B. de Pouilly in 1859.[3]

In the year 1880, a commissioner of Louisiana inspected all the cemeteries of New Orleans. All of them were in proper condition except for the Girod Street Cemetery. To be fair, the commissioner was right. Since the cemetery vaults had been built hastily with only one bricklayer, unpleasant odors were constantly wafting out, but since there was no regulation against that, it didn’t matter. What did matter was the commissioner’s notes 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 recommended that the Girod Street Cemetery be shut down, but apparently his recommendation was ignored (at least for the time being).

By the early 1940s the street cemetery had run into some more problems. The Girod Street Cemetery was run by the Christ Church Cathedral. However recently people had begun to use some newer, more well kempt cemeteries, and since the cemetery mainly catered to specifically the deceased Protestant, it fell into disrepair.

During this time, 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 all the 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) in 60 days, it would be demolished by the Church. In June of 1948, under the orders of Mayor Morrison, the church was simply destroyed. He had people start hauling away bricks, disregarding the protests of the Christ Church Cathedral, and alerted citizens that they should retrieve their loved ones. In October of 1958 the remaining 96,000 square feet of the cemetery were sold to the government for almost 300,000.

The cemetery fell into disrepair in the 20th century and it was deconsecrated on January 4, 1957. According to local historian Leonard Huber, between January and March of 1957 the human remains were moved elsewhere: the interred whites to Hope Mausoleum of New Orleans and the African Americans to Providence Memorial Park of Metairie.

The Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Smoothie King Center, Benson Tower, Entergy Tower, and Energy Centre were eventually constructed near, but not on, the cemetery site. A superstition, repeated by some, alleges that the poor record and the inability – for a long time – to appear in the Super Bowl, for the New Orleans Saints football team, was somehow supernaturally tied to the ground on which the dome was constructed. However, several sources state that the Superdome was not built on the former cemetery location, but on the former location of the Illinois Central Railroad engine terminal and roundhouse.[4]

The superstition has now been proven false with the team's success in winning Super Bowl XLIV. 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]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "King of Mardi Gras Dies in New Orleans", New York Amsterdam News, 28 August 1948.
  2. ↑ New Orleans is near sea level, and tombs are elevated above ground.
  3. ↑ Huber, Leonard. New Orleans Architecture, vol. III. Cemeteries. Gretna: Pelican Publishing, 1974, p. 20.
  4. ↑ "Girod Street Cemetery". Cities of the Dead. Cities of the Dead. 2007-09-26. Archived from the original on July 8, 2008. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
  5. ↑ "Scream a Little Scream With Me". Renne Peck. Times Picayune. 2007-10-27. Retrieved 2009-03-14.
  6. ↑ "Girod Street Cemetery Map Overlay".
  7. ↑ Moran, Kate. "State Could Sign Option for New Orleans Centre by Week's End". Times Picayune, 15 July 2008.

Coordinates: 29°56′59″N 90°04′44″W / 29.94972°N 90.07889°W / 29.94972; -90.07889

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.