Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (23 page)
Read Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans Online
Authors: John B. Garvey,Mary Lou Widmer
Tags: #History
Within the walls of this cemetery lies an interesting collection of New Orleans characters, including seven governors, six mayors (including Martin Behrman, who closed Storyville and rests as the eternal neighbor of Josie Arlington), and forty-nine kings of Carnival.
In the 1800s, because of the abundance of cypress in the area, New Orleans was the coffin capital of the United States, a fact that must have been both reassuring and profitable during the many yellow fever epidemics.
Death notices were tacked to lampposts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to notify neighbors and friends.
(Courtesy Leonard V. Huber Collection)
Funerals and Mourning
The care of these burial sites was a subject of great concern to New Orleanians, as were the rules and traditions that governed mourners. Death notices were tacked to poles and fences in the neighborhood of the deceased, giving the date and time of the internment and inviting friends to attend. Horse54s, pulling black shiny hearses, were draped with black and decorated with black plumes on their heads. White was used for children, and lavender or grey for the middle-aged. The horses had been trained to march, taking a single step with each note of the music.
At the hour of death, all clocks in the homes were stopped, mirrors were covered, and a crepe was hung on the front door. A huge wake coffee pot was brought out, since wakes were held in the home. All the women wore black clothing, which could be bought second-hand or rented for the occasion. Undertakers provided a service of redecorating poorly furnished homes and providing chairs for the visitors. A few touches of black crepe transformed the houses to honor the passing. “Mourning Hangings and Catafalque” were advertised at moderate prices or on moderate terms. “Coffin Furniture” was also offered at reasonable prices, and the cast iron furniture we now use in our gardens was first designed for cemetery use to accommodate visitors. At wakes and funerals, mourning was expected to be restrained. Lamentations were revered. To New Orleanians, the care one took of the family burial site was the measure of his or her respect for the dead and the grief he or she still bore. Creoles especially kept an eye on burial sites close to their family tombs and were quick to comment on the lack of care given this vault or that plot.
New Orleans:
Yesterday and Today
1857. Parlor of Gallier House at 1134 Royal Street, built by architect James Gallier Jr. in 1857 for his home. A museum property of Tulane University.
(Courtesy Susan Gandolfo)
1925. Four rows of Canary Island palms graced Anseman Avenue in City Park. Bare-breasted statues in front of the rows, which came from the Cotton Exchange, caused much outrage and were removed to the Metairie Cemetery.
(Courtesy City Park Collection)
1984. Entrance to the Louisiana World Exposition. Semi-nude figures reminiscent of the City Park statues once again caused a furor in the city but remained to welcome visitors to the Centennial Plaza from May to November.
1929. The lighthouse at Lake Pontchartrain, built in 1838, guarded Milneburg and signaled to ships arriving from the lake’s north shore. In 1929, the lighthouse was turned over to the Levee Board and the light extinguished. In 1935, WPA money helped create lakefront property that left the lighthouse on dry ground.
1939. Pontchartrain Beach Amusement Park moved the lighthouse to the end of Elysian Fields Avenue. It ended up in Kiddieland of City Park. Pontchartrain Beach closed in 1983.
1928. A 1920s look. Statue of Hebe, Olympic cupbearer, gazed down Lelong Avenue for sixty-five years. Donated by Commodore Ernest Lee Jahncke.
(Courtesy City Park Collection)
1922. A 1920s sound. Reverend Edward Cummings S. J., president of Loyola University, made the first radio broadcast in Louisiana, March 31, the day the license for WWL was granted. The telephone-like apparatus was in Marquette Hall on Loyola University’s campus.
(Courtesy Father Thomas Clancy Jr., S. J.,
and Loyola University)
1923. King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band.
Sitting, left to right:
Baby Dodds, Honore Dutre, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dobbs, and Lil Hardin (Louis Armstrong’s second wife).
Standing, left to right:
King Oliver and Bill Johnson.
(Courtesy Hogan Jazz Archives, Tulane University Library)
1994. Grammy Award-winning Neville Brothers, native New Orleanians. Older brothers got their start in the 1950s; all are now internationally known.
Left to right:
Cyril, Aaron, Charles, and Art.
(Courtesy Michael Jang)
1929. Canal and Baronne Streets before the Canal Street Beautification Project of 1930-31.
From left to right:
the Godchaux Building, the Miller Brothers, the Exclusive Shope, and Liggett’s Drug Store advertising Jacob’s Candies, the Strand Theater, and Parlor Stores for rent.
(Courtesy E. H. Gebhardt)
1967. Canal Street at Baronne Street on Mardi Gras day.
Left:
Walgreens Drug Store, Graff’s Men’s Store, Cine Royale.
Right:
Maison Blanche (behind Rex sign), Audubon Building, Kress Five-and-Dime (with white façade).
1950. The river at Canal Street, with pedestrian ramp to Algiers Ferry.
Left of ramp:
Poydras Street Wharf.
Right of ramp:
Louisiana and Nashville Railroad shed.