Maps Past & Present

Table Of Contents

Making Maps
Animated Tour
Tomb Types
Tomb Materials

Making Maps

Historic records, hand drawn cemetery plot maps, recent aerial photographs from the New Orleans City Commission, collected survey information and field drawings were combined to create digital maps that fully document current conditions and features.

Historic Sanborn maps

View of the Cemetery

Portion of GIS map

Field measurements

Section of field drawing

2000 aerial photograph

Portion of plot map

Animated Tour

3-D Model

Tomb Types

*St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 contains several major types of tombs*

“Wall/Block” Vault

Multiple tiers of individual burial vaults of brick vault or stone slab construction, arranged to form a single block or perimeter enclosure wall

“Step” Tomb

A low, single-vault semi-subterranean tomb possessing a stepped or moulded top and a top slab or end tablet

“Parapet” Tomb

A single or multiple vault tomb possessing a raised parapet front concealing the roof behind

“Platform” Tomb

A single or multiple vault tomb whose height is equal to or less than its width

“Sarcophagus” Tomb

A single or double platform tomb resembling a sarcophagus, usually on a raised base

“Pediment” Tomb

A multiple vault tomb whose height is greater thanits width and whose top is surmounted by an integrated frontgable end pediment of flat, triangular or segmental design

Society Tombs

A Society Tomb is not a Tomb Type, and most of the famous Society Tombs are classified as Wall/Block Vaults since they contain multiple tiers of individual burial vaults, arranged to form a single block or wall. Society Tombs were built by social or communal groups to ensure that all members would have burial space and ceremony.

“Markers”

Any non-tomb mortuary structure which marks a below-grade burial, but does not contain an interment and whose form is often sculptural. Can be Simple or Compound.

“Ruins”

There are over 100 tombs lots that are empty or in advanced ruin state. Tomb type was not identified for lots like these. Empty spaces that once was meant for a tomb were also surveyed.

Tomb Materials

The tombs were built with soft hand-made clay bricks, then covered with a protective stucco layer and limewashed.

Solid brick was the traditional structural masonry building material in New Orleans, as there was no local stone. Buildings seen in the earliest drawings show construction in wood, before brick was available locally. Stone or brick were not available in the lower Mississippi valley and along the Gulf Coast. Historical references differ slightly on the establishment of the first brickyard on Bayou St. John. One reference, taken from the Mississippi Provincial Archives,

Bricks & Morter

There are predominantly four types of stone found at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1: white marble imported from Europe is the most common, followed by dark gray limestone, slate, and granite. There is no dimensional stone in the New Orleans region, so all building stone was imported from Europe or the northern United States. Marble is a calcareous metamorphic rock, originating from sedimentary limestone. Marble became the stone of choice for its white color, fine texture and ease in carving. It was used for closure tablets, tablet surrounds, shelves, markers, statues and stone crosses and urns. Marble and limestone were also used as dimensional or veneer stone on more elaborate tombs.

Stone

One solution to failing tombs has been to completely encase them in cement. Water will still enter the structure through rising damp and any small micro-cracks that develop, the internal porous materials will still respond to moisture movement and will try to move, creating stress within the system. The strength of the concrete shell will hold these stresses in check for some time until they become too great, when the pressure will be relieved through the development of a structural rupture.

Cement