The cemeteries of New Orleans are peculiar to the city, and are visited by all strangers.

A. Oakey Hall, 1851

Epilogue

Like all necrogeographies, New Orleans' early Creole cemeteries were landscapes of memory; however their later fame as 'cities of the dead' was more the result of an acquired reputation from the observations and writings of foreign visitors who found the acquired sublime and picturesque dualities of these places irresistible. This culturally external appreciation helped transform these early burial sites into theatrical landscapes as memory. Today a visit to the city's early cemeteries can still evoke an intense emotional response and personal reflection on that great universal given the powerful imagery of the crowded tombs and the contained isolation of the setting. Still exotic to the majority of visitors who come daily on guided tours during their stay in the French Quarter, the tombs and their inscriptions afford tangible access to the city's history and its many past personalities. Here the past truly is a foreign country delivering the same promises of entertainment and escape to the modern tourist.

At the level of place experience, the cemetery still retains much integrity and authenticity through its original tombs and intact tombscapes. While cognition creates places, recognition extends them through time. For both, memory is a powerful agent. Nevertheless, new perceptions and new values require reconsideration in terms of how the site has transformed and how it is to be preserved and presented today. This demands identification of the place-defining qualities and how they will be treated -- sustained, altered, or reclaimed. Unfortunately, many of the tombs sadly reflect the changing demographics of American inner cities and a loss of social tradition in their ruined and dilapidated state. Efforts to address this in the form of reuse-based restoration and tourist development as an alternative to devotional attendance and upkeep have had mixed results leading in most cases to no or over-restoration and unsympathetic uses and settings.

These sites' acquired picturesque qualities and sentimental associations were highly valued by the late nineteenth century judging from the many written descriptions and popular images. Such qualities of physical transformation through gentle weathering and overgrown vegetation were physical proof of age and the transitory nature of all things, especially potent and relevant for memory landscapes. To our modern eyes, this critical, subtle and often contrived aspect of these places has been misunderstood and confused with dilapidation and ruin in an effort to confront abandonment and redundancy and streamline maintenance in the name of economy. Establishing a conservation program which understands and re-establishes these important place-defining aspects and values while accommodating changing associations and new forms of tourism is now of critical importance for these sites. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is now at the crossroads of transformation, passing from a mixed use traditional place of cultivated decay to a constructed ‘heritage attraction’. Such remains the challenge and paradox for all heritage where tradition recedes and preservation begins.

Text adapted from Frank G. Matero, Dead Space: Defining the New Orleans' Creole Cemetery, Exhibit at Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, April 2002.