“2,000 dead may lie beneath Canal Blvd.” declares a Times-Picayune headline (Figure 1). During a drainage and paving project, a New Orleans’ construction crew uncovered thousands of unmarked burials along a three block section of Canal Boulevard. Splintered coffins, scattered bones and remnants of shrouds littered the excavated portion of an historic cemetery. Representatives of the city attorney’s office, archaeologists, graduate students, reporters, and “on lookers” gathered at the site to examine the ghoulish discovery. Because the construction was a federally funded project, it was halted to accommodate archaeological reconnaissance. However, demand for completing the project took precedence over forensic analysis or sentiments of sacrilege. Within two weeks, a priest deconsecrated the site and construction resumed. Human remains excavated during the project were reburied; but today thousands still lie beneath the asphalt.
Figure 1. Crypts are visible above and behind archaeologists excavating human remains uncovered in a trench along Canal Boulevard. (CanalNews.jpg)
The discovery of human remains near the popular intersection of Metairie, Canal, City Park and Ponchartrain should have been no surprise given the context of surrounding cemeteries. Known for its Cities of the Dead, tours of New Orleans’ regularly visit a cluster of cemeteries at this location to admire the elaborate material culture of above ground tombs –Metairie Cemetery with its elaborate headstones and ornate sarcophagi is a good example. Furthermore, this cluster of well-known cemeteries is visible from the freeway interchange of interstate highways 10 and 610. Anyone passing by could recognize that this area was a place for the dead. So what went wrong? Why did construction crews dig through block after block of sacred remains shattering the caskets and scattering the bones and contents throughout the construction site for all to see (and smell!)? Why weren’t these graves located, excavated, and reinterred before construction ever began? Shouldn’t they have known that they were about the excavated gravesites? The answer is definitely ‘yes, they should have known’. A cursory review of historic document and maps reveals that cemeteries did exist in this area, and the maps reveal the spatial and temporal land use changes to portions of these cemeteries that erased visible signs of burials in earlier decades. A comparison of historic to current maps in a time series from 1868 to 1992 shows subtle land use change as a result of subdivision and urban encroachment at Canal Boulevard and Metairie Road (Figure 2 a-f). The potential for uncovering graves could have been predicted and the cultural/historic research of maps could have serves as a forewarning prior to issuance of construction permits. Thus, recovery efforts could have been predicted and the happenstance discovery of unmarked graves along with the desecration and scattering of the contents along a three block section of Canal Street could have been mitigated. Exhuming and reentering the graves could have happened long before the morose excavation of hundreds of coffins during the drainage and street paving project.
Happenstance excavation and desecration of unmarked graveyards has happened over and over again in New Orleans. The scattering of bones is nothing new for city construction crews. Cemetery Ridge represents a good example. Since the mid-1850s French Quarter cemeteries have been relocated beyond the city limits – often to parcels adjoining the quarter in an effort to remove the smell of decaying flesh from daily activities and prevent potential contagion. This removal is well documented on a time series of maps of this area. During subsequent phases of New Orleans’ urban growth, cemeteries were increasingly relocated a distance from the downtown area. In the 1800s Cemetery Ridge was established well-beyond city limits on Metairie Road between New Canal and Canal Boulevard to relieve the overcrowded downtown cemeteries. As the name implies, this cemetery is situated on relatively high ground in a city that is mostly below sea level. Unfortunately, as the name implies, this high location has now become coveted property. When it was first established Cemetery Ridge was one parcel surrounded by swamp and considered too remote for development. Accessed was on unpaved mud-rutted roads only (Figure 2a). By 1874 substantial portions of Cemetery Ridge were divided into sections maintained by various organizations, with roadways separating lots. Hence, it became known as “Cemeteries Ridge.”
Figure 2. Map time series showing land use change at Cemeteries Ridge from 1868 to 1992.
(a) 1868 Department of the Gulf Map, General McAlester, Major of Engineers
(b) 1873 U.S. Government Land Office
(c) 1874 Mississippi River Commission, Survey of the Mississippi River (Chart 76)
(d) 1932 U.S. Department of the Interior, Geological Survey
(e) 1966 U.S. Department of the Interior, Geological Survey
(f) 1992 U.S. Geological Survey
Over time, sections of Cemeteries Ridge fell into disarray and were appropriated for maintenance by other organizations, such as the Archdiocese (Figure 3). As New Orleans’ urban development extended toward Lake Ponchartrain, paved roads made the cemeteries on the ridge more accessible (Figure 2b and 2c). A combination of urban growth, road improvements, and its ideal location a few feet above the rising tide of flood waters, Cemeteries Ridge became a popular burial ground (Figure 2d). Most noticeable in the map time series, since 1932 the dimensions of Cemeteries Ridge decrease as portions of cemetery sections have been replaced by more recent development, such as widened and paved roads (Figure 2d and 2e). Since 1966 urban expansion and urban land use demand continue to raze portions of Cemeteries Ridge (Figure 2f).
Figure 3. New Orleans Archdiocese Cemeteries situated near the intersection of Canal and City Park are well-known for their elaborate crypts.
Today, Cemeteries Ridge represents a large number of distinctly separate cemeteries at one location: Cypress Grove I (founded by the Firemen’s Charitable and Benevolent Association), Cypress Grove II (Charity Hospital Cemetery), St. Patrick Cemeteries I, II and III (Catholic Archdiocese), Odd Fellows, Masonic, Greenwood, Metairie, Holt and, most recently, Lake Lawn Park Cemetery. The graves uncovered during the drainage and repaving project along Canal Boulevard mentioned above were formerly part of a section dedicated to Charity Hospital for the burial of indigents – Cypress Grove II. Charity Hospital tended to the poor and oversaw mass burials during cholera and influenza epidemics. When Cypress Grove I became overcrowded, Cypress Grove II was established.
Cypress Grove II was open from 1840 to 1920. Most of the cemetery was closed in 1911, when Canal Boulevard cut a swath through the cemetery. The remaining portion of the cemetery closed in 1920. During the 1920s, New Orleans’ urban expansion toward Lake Ponchartrain resulted in removal of any visible evidence of graves along a three block length of Canal Boulevard through Cypress Grove II. According to Cemetery records, Cypress Grove II contained about 35,000 burials. Apparently, few in-ground burials were actually removed when this burial place was appropriated for other purposes in subsequent years.
Land use demands continue to adversely impact cemeteries on historic Cemeteries Ridge and elsewhere in New Orleans. Nearly two decades after the happenstance discovery of subsurface remains in what was Cypress Grove II, Cypress Grove I was removed. Also, situated near the intersection of Canal and Metairie, Cypress Grove I is shown in the map time series (Figure 2). In Figure 4, a construction tarp obstructs visibility of the cemetery landscape, obscuring graves in the process of relocation. Viewed through a gap in the protective screening, a monument attesting to anatomical recovery efforts stands in lieu of accumulated grave markers. And in the place of grave markers are survey flags marking grave sites for removal of human remains.
Figure 4. Charity Hospital Cemetery (Cypress Grove I) in the process of human remains removal, 2003.
A reduction in the number of cemeteries, combined with a lack of cemetery expansion in a metropolitan area, are good indicators for the likely encounter of burials during subsurface disturbance. It is common practice that once a cemetery falls into ruins, landscape evidence of a place for burying the dead is razed from the surface. Once a cemetery loses its dedication human remains can be ordered removed within forty days after the first publication of a notice to disinter, but it is unlikely that in the past when a cemetery lost its dedication all human remains were removed. Prior to 1970, few cemeteries maintained plat maps or burial records. Public notices requesting relatives to identify and pay for grave removal are only published in local newspapers. And the reality of identifying an individual grave is complicated by poor record keeping, landscape modifications, and lack of living memory. In many cases when a cemetery was “removed,” it was not entirely erased from existence – only grave markers were relocated. After removal, the land is redeveloped and, thus, the context of a place for the dead is destroyed and eventually forgotten. As an isolated occurrence, grave disturbance assaults our sensibilities and is often expressed as public outrage. However, when land use demands are great, it is common practice for the need (or greed) of the living to take precedence over a place for the dead.
During 1980s economic development, human remains were uncovered in several of New Orleans’ former cemeteries. After each sensational discovery, and amidst public outrage, historic map and records research verified the former locations of long forgotten cemeteries. Yet redevelopment of places for the dead continues at breakneck speed as a result of urban expansion and spiraling real estate prices. Construction of the famous New Orleans Superdome (now referred to as the Mercedes-Benz Superdome) is a good example of this type of grave desecration for the sake of progress. In the case of human remains discovered in landfill from New Orleans’ Superdome construction there was little opportunity for sanctity, reinternment, or even data collection. Because construction of the Superdome was not a federally funded project, work was not halted to accommodate archaeological and forensic investigation. Consequently, human remains lie in situ beneath the Superdome. Yes, the New Orleans Saints play football every season trampling across the top of unmarked graves – an unholy juxtaposition of religious ceremony. There is probably no other graveyard in the United States that attracts such an immense crowd of annual visitors as the New Orleans Superdome, and what graveyard do you know of that has its own sponsor? Perhaps it should be called “the Mercedes-Benz Necropolis”.
Another example of a forgotten cemetery is the old Protestant Cemetery which has today has become the financial backbones of New Orleans. This was also known as the Girod Street Cemetery, and more colorfully as the Cimetiere des Heretiques (the Heretic Cemetery) or le quartier des damnes (the Quarter of the Damned). This cemetery is shown on historic USGS and Sanborn maps of New Orleans. The Protestant Cemetery was established on the outskirts of the French Quarter (the city limits at the time), near the swamp. As the St. Louis catholic cemeteries became overcrowded, protestant burials were relocated to the Protestant Cemetery. A description of a burial in 1834 depicts the body of a pauper laid in a hole that was dug through the “decaying and crumbling fragments of those who had preceded him.” Surrounded by “low cemeteries,” the Protestant Cemetery is described as a haunted specter of departed spirits with overturned tree roots exposing cavities of human skeletons. The area surrounding the cemetery was shunned for residential purposes until the legends were forgotten, and the haunting old willows disappeared. By 1920 the Protestant Cemetery had succumbed to disrepair and acts of vandalism. After 135 years of interments, it was destroyed in 1957. Today, Girod Street centripetally links financial institutions (skyscrapers) and tourism related activities (convention center) to the French Quarter. This location is now perhaps fittingly haunted by bankers, brokers and financiers, and perhaps still could be referred to as the “Quarter of the Damned”.