July 28, 2011Paul and I embark on our Urban Hike of Uptown and the Garden District by first taking the St. Charles Streetcar. Filled with wooden seats and window sills, passengers are urged to close the windows when it begins to rain. On this particular day, Tropical Storm Don was causing intermittent storms, so the windows were up and down all day.
An Uptown vista, if you walk over a hill where St. Charles Avenue curves in Carrollton. Like in St. Louis, the Mississippi River is never too far away in New Orleans.New Orleans is definitely a town that you can Gothic-out in!
From cemeteries to thunderstorms, I was in Goth Heaven!
From cemeteries to thunderstorms, I was in Goth Heaven! "New Orleans Cemeteries are like New Orleans. They swing between destitution and opulence but always with style."
--Andrei Cordescu 
"The dead in New Orleans are interred above the muddy gumbo of the soil to keep them from slipping away in the water. The dead are drier than the living and that accounts for their air of superieority. they have shelter, eternity, and are cautiously but faithfully attended by the living. They are also more numerous than the living--the reward of an old city--and love to congregate, haunt, and dance. Only the thinnest film, a razor-edge of twilight, separates them from their descendents." --Cordescu
"The dead in New Orleans are interred above the muddy gumbo of the soil to keep them from slipping away in the water. The dead are drier than the living and that accounts for their air of superieority. they have shelter, eternity, and are cautiously but faithfully attended by the living. They are also more numerous than the living--the reward of an old city--and love to congregate, haunt, and dance. Only the thinnest film, a razor-edge of twilight, separates them from their descendents." --Cordescu
Most people know, but I'll explain again. If corpses were buried underground in NOLA, they would float away, so they are interred in above ground crypts. Lafayette Cemetery hosts the individuals who succumbed to yellow fever, the worst outbreak being in 1853 when 8,000 people died. This cemetery also houses many German immigrants.
Anyone who knows me, knows my deep and abiding love for cemeteries. I can spend hours in the best ones, and the best ones are in New Orleans. Lafayette Cemetery, in the Garden District is one of the cemeteries that is safe to visit without a guide. Andre Cordescu lived across the street from it for years and made a habit of regulary taking his coffee there.
Dead Wreaths and Mardi Gras Beads, Lafayette Cemetery
Here it is, the former home of Anne Rice, but most importantly, the fictional home of the Mayfair Witches!
This is the house at 2900 Pyrtania Street where F. Scott Fitzgerald drafted This Side of Paradise in his rented flat. He spent less than three months here. It is on a corner across from Lafayette Cemetery.
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