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'Cities of the Dead' Bustle With Life
New Orleans' St. Louis No. 1 Filled With Stories, Eccentricities
Last updated Sunday, April 29, 2007 3:16 PM CDT in Columns
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The Other Way by Becca Bacon Martin
Visitors to New Orleans call them "Cities of the Dead," and that's exactly what the old cemeteries feel like: Bustling communities where the living are tolerated only because their time will eventually come.
Just outside the French Quarter, in the city's oldest cemetery, the dead interred defy enumeration. Since St. Louis No. 1 was established in 1789, it has grown to look like a tightly packed New York borough -- in miniature. Tombs are weaseled in, shoulder to shoulder, tall and short, some the size of a Cadillac, some barely wide enough for the body within.
Many of the tombs bear no names, but even those that do -- often in French -- could not be added up to make a census. In each tomb, there are many bodies -- and that's what makes New Orleans cemeteries unique.
Because the original New Orleans was surrounded by swampy ground, it was tough to keep the dead in their proper place, and disease became a concern. That's how St. Louis No. 1 came to be consecrated, outside the Vieux Carre walls on what is now Basin Street between Conti and St. Louis. The 300-square-foot space made necessity the grim reaper of invention, and thus the burial system was born. A body would be placed in the tomb, without embalming or a casket, and there it stayed for at least a year and a day.
Alan Raphael, a cemetery volunteer and guide, explains the "year and a day" timetable:
"There are two reasons for a year and a day," he says. "The traditional Christian mourning period, when you'd cover the mirrors and wear a black armband, was a year and a day. But the second reason is a little more practical. During that year and a day, the tomb is going to pass through one of our brutal summers. The sun will bake down and cause the temperature inside to rise to 350 to 400 degrees for days on end, and it creates a rudimentary form of cremation."
When the time of mourning has passed, Raphael says, the remains are scooped into the caveaux -- an area below the shelf where the body first rests -- joining the bones of the ancestors who went before.
The question Raphael is most often asked, he says, is, "But what if someone in the family dies before a year and a day has passed?" The answer is a temporary wall vault -- which guides sometimes jokingly call a "condo." The family pays rent until the body can be moved to its final resting place.
New Orleans cemeteries have quite a reputation for their roles in films like "Easy Rider" -- no, the Catholic diocese didn't read the script, Raphael says -- but at St. Louis No. 1, the biggest attraction is the tomb of "voodoo queen" Marie Laveau. Visitors who think they've found her grave leave behind candles, coins and other offerings and scratch Xs onto the marker itself as a way of seeking good fortune -- and Laveau's power. Raphael says it's a huge source of frustration to cemetery conservators, who are trying to save the tombs for posterity.
It's not unusual for folks in Northwest Arkansas to pay a visit to Evergreen Cemetery or the Confederate Cemetery in Fayetteville to seek the peace and silence found within their walls. Don't expect that tranquility in St. Louis No. 1. The dead -- and the living -- all have too much to say.
About this columnist
Becca Bacon Martin is the entertainment editor at The Morning News. Her column began running in 1988 and appears each Sunday. Her work was recently honored with first place in the Arkansas Press Association Better Newspaper Contest. See past columns on her archive page.
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