Girod Street Cemetery
History|Architecture|Personality|Blight and Deconsecration|Girod's Legacy
Girod Cemetery, from an Civil-War era photo by McPherson and Olivier, New Orleans
New Orleans was founded as a French crown colony. As such, the official religion of the colony was Roman Catholicism. Being a port city, Protestants also moved to New Orleans over time, particularly after the Louisiana Territory was sold by France to the United States.
The original cemeteries in the city were owned and administered by the Catholic Diocese of New Orleans. Since Catholics didn't want their loved ones being buried alongside Protestants, a section of St. Louis Cemetery Number One on Basin Street was given to the Episcopal parish, Christ Church, then located on Canal and Dauphine Streets. This area of St. Louis Number One is known to this day as the "Protestant Section."
As the Episcopal parish grew in size, the chapter decided to acquire land for a cemetery of their own. In 1822, they purchased a parcel at Girod and Liberty Streets, at the rear of the Faubourg Ste. Marie (St. Mary) neighborhood. Faubourg St. Mary was the original "American" section of the city, on the uptown side of Canal Street. It's now known as the city's Central Business District, or CBD.
The cemetery flourished throughout the rest of the 19th century, but a critical management error on part of the Christ Church chapter led to problems in the 20th. The chapter did not allocate funds for "perpetual care" of tombs and graves, instead relying on current-year income to maintain existing structures. A number of non-sectarian cemeteries opened in the mid-1800s, most notably Cypress Grove and Greenwood, both at the north end of Canal Street. By the 1920s, the Girod Street cemetery's new internments dropped off to the point where Christ Church did not have sufficient funds to properly maintain the property. By the 1930s, many sections of the cemetery had fallen into serious disrepair. Many families began to remove remains from their tombs and re-inter them in other cemeteries.
The City of New Orleans officially condemned Girod Street Cemetery in 1955. On January 4, 1957, the cemetery was deconsecrated by the Rt. Rev. Girault M. Jones, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana. In the two months following the deconsecration, a mass removal and re-internment of remains took place. Christ Church Cathedral (the parish had moved from Canal Street to St. Charles Avenue in 1886, and the church became the seat of the Bishop of Louisiana in 1891) purchased a crypt in Hope Mausoleum to house these remains. The remains of blacks were re-interred in a mass grave in Providence Memorial Park.
After the cemetery was deconsecrated, the land then reverted back to city ownership. That parcel of land eventually became what is now the parking garage for the New Orleans Center shopping mall, located next to the Louisiana Superdome.
