Lafayette Cemetery No. 1
New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana
Marker Inscription
Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, founded 1833, has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior. Feb. 1, 1972.
Erected by U.S. National Register of Historic Places
The Story
Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 was laid out in 1833 to serve the growing City of Lafayette, its raised stone tombs answering the low, wet ground of New Orleans where burial below the surface was impractical. Generations of the city's residents — immigrants and epidemic victims among them — were interred in its famous above-ground vaults. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
Why it matters
Its distinctive city of the dead reflects the multicultural fabric and hard environmental realities of nineteenth-century New Orleans.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Salem United Church of Christ
New Orleans, LA
Founded on March 8, 1863, as the first German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jefferson City, this congregation served the German-speaking immigrants of a suburb later absorbed into New Orleans. It dedicated its first building in 1866 and the present church in 1906, and it preached in German until English services began in 1895. The parish, now Salem United Church of Christ, marked its 125th anniversary in 1988.
Saint Stephen Church
New Orleans, LA
Founded in 1849 by Fr. Angelo Gandolfo, this parish first met in private homes of Faubourg Bouligny before dedicating a chapel and then, as it grew, a larger church. The present Gothic-style St. Stephen's was begun in 1868 amid Reconstruction's civil unrest and economic hardship, delaying its completion until the late 1880s, with a 200-foot steeple blessed in 1906.
St. Patrick's Church
New Orleans, LA
Established in 1833 and completed in 1840, St. Patrick's is the oldest parish church outside the French Quarter, built to serve New Orleans's English-speaking Catholics apart from the older Creole parishes. In 1850 it briefly served as pro-cathedral while St. Louis Cathedral was rebuilt, and here in 1851 Antoine Blanc received the pallium as the first Archbishop of New Orleans.
St. Patrick's Church National Landmark
New Orleans, LA
This plaque records the 1975 designation of St. Patrick's Church as a National Historic Landmark, recognizing its national significance in American history. Completed in 1840, the Gothic Revival church is one of New Orleans's architectural treasures and the oldest parish church outside the French Quarter.