When I entered the gateway, I was struck with surprise and admiration. Though destitute of trees, the cemetery is certainly more deserving, from its peculiarly novel and unique appearance, of the attention of strangers, than any other in the United States ... Joseph Holt Ingraham, 1835

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 - A Cultural Landscape

Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 is a living cultural landscape. It is a dynamic space where religious devotion and cultural tourism coexist. It is one of few cemeteries in the United States that has been accepted for the National Register (July 30, 1975) and has recently been identified as one of the Save America's Treasures sites.

The result of Spanish Royal decree in response to urban crowding and the fear of disease and a disastrous flood and Yellow Fever epidemic the year before, this extramural site reassigned the dead to a marginal realm away from the living in terrain traditionally associated with the undesirable, the unhealthy, and the dangerous. Here, outside the ramparts, was also located the city's drainage and sewage collection point, as well as the expansive cypress and palmetto swamp separating Lake Ponchartrain from the northern edge of the city. Later, during the late eighteenth century, Carondelet's canal and commercial basin was constructed on the eastern and southern perimeter of the cemetery and efforts were made to drain the swamp. By the mid nineteenth century, the cemetery would find itself encroached yet again, this time by the expansion of Basin Street and the surrounding streets and the activities of the lumber mills, breweries, and rail yards.

By the end of the century, the cemetery shared the neighborhood with the social fringes of society in the infamous area known as "The District" or Storyville. In the 1940s, Storyville gave way to public housing, and, in the 1970s, the construction of the interstate. Today the cemetery is a major tourist attraction on the edge of the popular French Quarter, and next to Louis Armstrong Park, now managed by the National Park System and soon to be developed to celebrate New Orleans as the home of jazz.

Opening quote: Ingraham, Joseph Holt. The South-West By a Yankee. Vol.1. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835.