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Lafayette Cemetery #1
Up to the 1840s, the city of New Orleans extended upriver only to what is now Jackson Avenue. The area that is now “uptown” New Orleans was actually the cities of Lafayette and Carrollton. Populated mostly by Irish and German immigrants, the city of Lafayette constructed a cemetery in the square of land bounded by Prytania St., Washington Avenue, Coliseum St., and Sixth St. A wall was built around the cemetery in 1858. Because it is a municipal cemetery, those buried there are an interesting mix of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish.
Twelve-vault (3x4) that closely fits the description of the Mayfair family tomb in Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour.
Lafayette No. One is known as the “Anne Rice Cemetery” to many, because the author has set a number of scenes from both her “Mayfair Witches” and “Vampire” novels there. When the movie “Interview With The Vampire” was filmed, the production company constructed a plywood “tomb” in an empty corner of the cemetery because a normal tomb was obviously too small to shoot Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise sitting inside it!
There are a number of society and family mausoleums in Lafayette, including those of several volunteer fire companies.
Ownership of Lafayette No. One passed to they city of New Orleans when the city of Lafayette was annexed. As such, the cemetery suffered decades of neglect. In the 1980s, a group called “Save Our Cemeteries” focused their attention on Lafayette No. One, raising funds to preserve the cemetery as well as restoring a number of tombs. The cemetery has become a popular backdrop for television and movie production companies, whose usage fees also contribute to preservation.
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