The Cemeteries of New Orleans: A Cultural History by Peter B. Dedek

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Cemeteries of New Orleans: A Cultural History by Peter B. Dedek Joy M. Giguere The Cemeteries of New Orleans: A Cultural History. By Peter B. Dedek. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv, 262. $38.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-6610-9.) While the scholarship on cemeteries, burial customs, and grave markers in America has grown dramatically over the last four decades, Peter B. Dedek, in The Cemeteries of New Orleans: A Cultural History, offers a major comprehensive historical analysis of New Orleans's cemetery landscapes, examining "those who designed, built, visited, mourned, and worked in these burial grounds" (p. xi). Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Dedek traces the parallel development of New Orleans society and its landscapes for the dead. Beginning with the development of the city's first known public burial ground in 1724, six years after the initial settlement in the area by the French, Dedek reveals how, contrary to popular understanding, New Orleanians originally buried their dead belowground in soggy, watery graves. Not until the early nineteenth century, as the population and economic development began to dramatically expand, did residents begin to construct aboveground tombs for the dead in the city's first major Catholic burying ground, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 (established in 1789). Dedek examines the subsequent development of places of burial to meet periodic public health crises, such as yellow fever epidemics, and to accommodate the rapidly increasing population, exhibiting the ways in which the evolution of the cities of the dead paralleled that of the city of living. Interwoven throughout this history are the lives of those who were instrumental in the design of the cemeteries and of the tombs contained therein, including French architect Jacques Nicolas Bussière de Pouilly, Italian artist Pietro Gualdi, and black Creole tomb builder Florville Foy. In his examination of the pervasiveness of society tombs—tombs established for members of benevolent, fraternal, or labor societies—and emphasis on impermanent tomb or vault rentals, Dedek reveals the collectivist nature of New Orleans burials, which Anglo-Protestants from elsewhere in the country often found shocking and even disturbing. A particular strength of this text is Dedek's emphasis on how the multiethnic influences of the community—French, Spanish, English, Caribbean, African, and Creole—and Old World (stretching back to Roman antiquity) burial [End Page 706] practices determined the styles found in the sepulchral architecture and grave decorations. By providing side-by-side photographs for comparison—including photographs of tombs in Pompeii and nineteenth-century brick tombs in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, of ancient Roman columbaria next to oven wall vaults from 1830, and of oven vaults in Madrid, Spain, beside oven tombs in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1—Dedek aptly underscores both the geographical and the temporal influences on New Orleans burial practices and tomb architecture, which, when compared with the popularization of architectural revivals across the country during the nineteenth century, reflect the multiculturalism that helped define New Orleans society. Recognizing the long-standing status of New Orleans's cemeteries as tourist attractions, Dedek includes a revealing chapter on the interrelationship between Voodoo beliefs and practices, how they manifested within the cemeteries, and how those associated with the religion, especially famed Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau and her tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, were at once wildly misunderstood by the general public and irresistible attractions for visitors to the city. His concluding chapter, "Slums of the Dead: Decay and Cemetery Preservation," brings the history of New Orleans's burial places to the present, both analyzing the current state of preservation of these historic sites and calling for greater attention to be paid to the particular problems of protecting these and other historic cemeteries from the vagaries of time, vandalism, and tourism. For those who are unfamiliar with sepulchral architecture and architectural revivalism, Appendix A provides examples of the prevailing types and styles of tombs found in New Orleans cemeteries. Appendix B includes a list with brief histories of more than twenty cemeteries in the city. Altogether, The Cemeteries of New Orleans represents a significant contribution to scholarship on cemeteries, grave marker studies, architectural history, and the social and...