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Raising the Dead
New Orleans has a unique approach to life—and death.

By Kerri McCaffety

We didn't have angels in southwest Texas where I grew up. Not like in New Orleans. In the famous above-ground cemeteries here, marble angels weep for the souls of two centuries of forefathers, Saint Michael battles a dragon, and Christ finds a lost lamb. Beneath them, the bones and dust of thousands—loves felled at the duelling oaks, victims of yellow fever, voodoo queens, pirates, and soldiers—rest in these cities of the dead.

The marshy land and tropical rains in this part of Louisiana make underground burials impractical, so in the 18th and 19th centuries the people of New Orleans began placing the departed in above-ground tombs. Today you can find more than 30 cemeteries all over town with their rows of whitewashed tombs, blinding white in the Southern sun, and crumbling brick vaults broken by the roots of oak trees. They chronicle wars and plagues and testify to a spiritual culture's respect for mortality.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 dominates my Bayou St. John neighborhood, and from my back door I can see the rows of white crosses. For years, whenever I went to the local grocery store, I walked along Esplanade Avenue below a host of marble guardian angels clustered near the lower branches of huge oak trees. The angels' beautiful features and the endless rows of tombs made me realize that the cemeteries were a rich photographic opportunity. Spending time among the tombs turned out to be a magical experience and a history lesson.

Spending time among the tombs turned out to be a magical experience and a history lesson.

While photographing St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 on Basin Street at the edge of the French Quarter, I began to see it as a microcosm of New Orleans history. There are Spanish-style tombs on the periphery, French Colonial family crypts forming a majority inside and society tombs—group crypts—representing groups of Italians and other immigrants. In the center is the resting place of the city's Voodoo queen, Marie Laveau. When this cemetery, the first one above ground, opened in 1788, New Orleans had been Spanish-held for two decades. The honeycomb-like wall vaults, called ovens (fours in French), are common in Spain's colonies all over the New World. The Spanish also introduced society tombs, often the largest and most elaborate in the cemeteries.

Although New Orleans does have Spanish influences, they are overshadowed by the French. Most tombs are Creole-style, single-family crypts. The oldest are simple brick structures, plastered and whitewashed, large enough for two casket chambers, one above the other. After a given time the family removes a casket, burns it and places the remains in a crypt beneath the chambers. This way the tomb can serve for generations. A slab of marble covering the opening lists the names of the departed. Often the first names are worn away by time. In these crypts rest many men who lost their lives in the Creole tradition of defending their honor in duels, their tombs marked "Mort sur le champ d'honneur." Also laid to rest here in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 are historic figures such as Jean Étienne Boré, the first mayor of New Orleans; and Paul Morphy, the first American chess hero. People still leave offerings at Marie Laveau's tomb and scratch an X on its walls for luck.

Yellow fever and cholera epidemics swept through New Orleans throughout the mid-19th century, with a thousand dying in a single month in 1833. Because people thought the cemetery stench spread the plague, brick entombment became law. The city built new cemeteries farther from the residences in the French Quarter, on a ridge around Bayou St. John. These cemeteries, including St. Louis No. 3, the St. Patrick Cemeteries, Greenwood, Cypress Grove, and many more, are clustered in the Mid City neighborhood. They were the final destination of a streetcar line that ran up Canal Street to Mid City. In 1946 playwright Tennessee Williams wrote that the crossing of the Cemeteries streetcar and the streetcar named Desire (Desire Street) was a perfect metaphor for the human condition.

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Kerri McCaffety, a professional photographer with a degree in anthropology, has documented New Orleans for more than 13 years. Her book about New Orleans' historic bars, Obituary Cocktail, was published in 1998.