The tombs in their Moorish dwellings, temples, chapels, palaces, mosques ... and structures of almost every kind ... Many of the tombs were ... miniature Grecian temples; while others resembled French, or Spanish edifices,

Joseph Holt Ingraham, 1835

Tomb Architecture

The accounts of Ingraham (1835), Didimus (1845), Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley (1848-50) and Fredrika Bremer (1855), describe the beauty of the above ground tombs of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and 2. It is during this time that the well-read traveler was aware of cemetery advances in Paris at Père Lachaise, established in 1804, and the rural cemeteries such as Mt. Auburn (1831) in Massachusetts or Greenwood (1835) in Brooklyn, NY. It is also by the mid 1830s that the marble clad tombs designed by French émigré Jacques Nicolas Bussiere dePouilly were commissioned by prominent families for tombs in St. Louis Cemeteries No. 1 and 2 turning them into more monumental parks.

In the mid 1870s, George François Mugnier photographed St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, leaving us many images of the still active cemetery. The Society tombs that now dominate the view of the western section had already been built. Most family tombs seen in the Mugnier views are pediment tombs, or large platform and parapet tombs with multiple vaults, as many of the early single vault platform tombs had been "made-over" to accommodate multiple vault family burials. These "addition" tombs can be identified by changes in brick coursing or stucco, or tell-tale construction lines and odd placement of original tablets.

Key Tombs
Map Illustrating Tomb Types
Cemetery Architects & Artisans
The Story of Additions

Opening quote: Ingraham, Joseph Holt. The South-West By a Yankee. Vol.1. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835.