| St. Louis #1, like the other old cemeteries in the city, is walled. In fact, the walls themselves hold crypts. |
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| St. Louis #1 is the oldest of the city cemeteries |
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| This is the tomb of Marie Laveau. She was a practitioner of voodoo in the 1800's. People leave things at her tomb. Today there are a beer can, a doll and a pair of panties. |
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| Because all of the tombs are above ground, these places are often called cities of the dead. |
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| There were ethnic societies that had their own large tombs for their members. This is the one for the Italians. The tour guide said Dennis Hopper sat on the lap of this sculpture in a scene from Easy Rider. I have never seen it. |
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| The tomb of Homer Plessy. You know who he was, right? He was the Plessy of Plessy v. Ferguson fame. Unfortunately he lost that case, leading to a Supreme Court decision that allowed the separate but equal segregation laws that continued until Brown v. Board of Education. |
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| There is a plaque on this wall that says: "Probably the oldest extant wall vaults, a type of burial facility singular to New Orleans, this row of crypts separated the Protestant area from the main area of the cemetery. As families died out or moved away, time and the unrelenting elements took their toll." |
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| Here is the little Protestant section behind the wall. |
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| The tomb of Etienne Boré. He was appointed the first mayor of New Orleans when France acquired Louisiana from Spain in 1801. He was also the first person to successfully granulate sugar. |
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| The old tombs were made of brick and covered with stucco. Over time the stucco has fallen off a lot of them, giving them a creepier look. |
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| I liked the little statue of a weeping girl and the wrought iron gate on this tomb. |
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| Some tombs are stacked on top of one another in one structure. |
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