Oak and Laurel Cemetery Preservation, LLC
  • About
  • Services
  • Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Resources
  • Blog

J.N.B. de Pouilly:  Architect of New Orleans Cemeteries

2/21/2016

7 Comments

 
As any narrative on de Pouilly does, this article relies on the groundbreaking research and thesis of Ann Merritt Masson, “The Mortuary Architecture of Jacques Nicolas Bussiere de Pouilly,” Tulane University thesis, 1992.  Which exquisitely analyzed de Pouilly’s work in New Orleans cemeteries.
Picture
Detail of Caballero tomb, designed by de Pouilly, St. Louis No. 2, Square 2. Photo by Emily Ford.
One hundred and forty years ago, on February 21, 1875, Jacques Nicholas Bussiere de Pouilly died in his home on St. Ann Street.
 
In his seventy years of life, de Pouilly had been the harbinger of European neoclassical and revival architecture in New Orleans.  We see his touch on our city streets – in St. Augustine Catholic Church, and most notably St. Louis Cathedral.  But his influence was arguably greatest in the city’s cemeteries.  De Pouilly’s work is present in nearly every viewpoint of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and 2, and much of Cypress Grove Cemetery.  The breadth and innovation of his tomb architecture generated uncountable replications and inspirations, the products of which have shaped our burial grounds.

J.N.B. de Pouilly was born in July 1804 in Châtel-Censoir, France, southeast of Paris.  While much of his early life is unclear, it is assumed that in his architectural training he was influenced by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, if not a student of the school himself.[1]
 
He arrived in New Orleans in 1833, a time in which the French-speaking population of the city hungered for reconnection with Continental styles.  He quickly became the architect of note for the city’s First District, designing the St. Louis Exchange Hotel, among many other residential, commercial, and religious projects.
Picture
Tomb of Héloïse and Abelard, Père Lachaise Cemetery. From Manuel et Itinraire du Curieux dans la Cimetiére du Père la Chaise, printed by Emler Frères, 1828.
De Pouilly had also transported with him from France the grand styles of Parisian funerary architecture, namely those present in Père Lachaise Cemetery.  Founded in 1804, the rolling greenery and stately Greek and Egyptian revival monuments of the cemetery had already become a matter of great interest by the 1830s.  Pattern books of Père Lachaise monuments were available by order, and de Pouilly quickly fell into cemetery projects for his French-speaking clients seeking a part of this revolution of funerary architecture. 
 
De Pouilly combined architectural styles and motifs from Greece and Rome, notably the inverted torch, acroterion, and pedimental styles.  He also designed Egyptian Revival tombs, best known of which is the Grailhe tomb in St. Louis No. 2.  But de Pouilly’s often converged, modified, or entirely reinvented his influences.  His combination of revival details and command of materials resulted in definitively unique structures.  Conversely, many of his designs were near-exact replications of Père Lachaise monuments.
[2]
While Père Lachaise and Creole cemeteries like St. Louis may appear stylistically similar, de Pouilly had the significant task of fundamentally shifting the function of his New Orleans tombs from their Parisian prototype.  Although the monuments of Père Lachaise appear to be tombs or mausoleums, their design accommodates instead for below-ground burial.  That the architect’s designs kept their Parisian aesthetic while having been fundamentally re-worked to allow for above-ground burial is among the more impressive of his professional achievements.[3]
That de Pouilly worked so prolifically in cemeteries is, in itself, notable.  New Orleans cemeteries were (and are) overwhelmingly landscapes of vernacular design, meaning that tombs are created by the builders and seldom by formally-trained architects.  There are exceptions:  Pietro Gualdi designed the Societa Italiana tomb, and Father John Cambiaso is presumed to have designed the Jesuit tomb (now demolished), both in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.  However, this influence was rare.  With dozens of tombs attributed to his design, de Pouilly truly stands alone in his role within New Orleans cemetery history.

Yet de Pouilly did work with builders.  Based on de Pouilly’s own documents as well as signed work in situ, he contracted stonecutters and tomb builders who served a similar niche as his.  Namely, Paul Hippolyte Monsseaux and Florville Foy were the primary executers of his designs.  Both Foy and Monsseaux operated stonecutting shops next to the St. Louis Cemeteries – Monsseaux’s workshop was likely next door to de Pouilly’s building depot across from St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.  These French-speaking (and in Monsseaux’s case, French-born) builders created many of his best-known works, including the Iberian Society and Grailhe tombs.  
Picture
The Charbonnet tomb, St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 (1836) was manufactured in Paris and sent to New Orleans. The internee was born in San Domingue (Haiti), indicating strong cultural and stylistic ties within Francophone funerary art. Photo by Emily Ford.
In addition to the French St. Louis Cemeteries, de Pouilly worked also in American-dominated Cypress Grove Cemetery (est. 1840).  In Cypress Grove, de Pouilly additionally contracted with granite magnate Newton Richards to build the memorial of fallen firefighter Irad Ferry (died 1837).  He relied, too, on Monsseaux and Foy to construct such masterpieces as the Maunsel White tomb.  De Pouilly clearly had a strong grasp on the value of trade and materials, based on his choice of craftsmen and his apparent innovations in the world of cast stone.
 
De Pouilly’s career was marred by two construction disasters in the 1850s – first, the collapse of the central tower of St. Louis Cathedral while de Poilly was head architect, and second the collapse of a balcony at the Orleans Theatre.  From this point onward, his rising star waned, but it appears never to have faded in New Orleans cemeteries.
Picture
The tomb of the New Lusitanos, designed by de Pouilly. The final tomb was simpler than the architect's original drawings, owing to the client's sensibilities. Photo taken in 1957, just prior to the demolition of the cemetery. (LIFE Magazine, Robert W. Kelley)
In 1874, de Pouilly composed the final drawing in his only surviving sketchbook – a tomb he designed for himself and his family.  This tomb, like many depicted in his prolific sketches, would never be constructed.  Instead, de Pouilly was interred in a family wall vault in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.  Although the location was surely not intentional, the wall provides a lovely view of a number of de Pouilly-designed tombs.  In a nearly-illegible detail to his memorial tablet, the signature of Florville Foy can be detected as the carving hand of de Pouilly's final tablet.
 
De Pouilly’s obituary on February 22nd spoke grandly of a man who lived honestly and in service of his profession:
It is a name that will be treasured with fond recollections in the memories of a numerous host of friends and admirers of a man whose noble career should serve as an exemplar to future travelers through a world where principle too often yields the victory to the persuasions of temptation.  The noble dead live forever; they leave behind a reputation to which time adds dignity unto dignity, rectitude unto rectitude.  J.N. de Pouilly was born in France in the year 1805.  On arriving at the age of manhood he adopted the honorable profession of architecture, and in 1833, at the age of twenty-eight, he came to this country and practiced his calling in this city.
 
Some of our most prominent buildings remain as trophies of his professional skill. He planned the Cathedral, the St. Louis Hotel, the Citizen’s Bank and the church of St. Augustin, besides many other structures of importance.  
Picture
From Pere la Chaise, by Mary Martha Sherwood, printed by F. Houlston and Son, 1823.
St. Peter’s lofty dome cenotaphs the name of Michael Angelo [sic]:  Sir Christopher Wren’s greatness is sepulchred in the mightiness of St. Paul’s.  Mr. De Pouilly fashioned no wonders such as these, but yet a greater, the enduring fabric of an honest life, and will be entombed in the constant remembrance of devoted friends.
 
After a painful and lingering illness, Mr. De Pouilly, hoary with the winters of seventy years, and surrounded by children and other relatives, bade farewell to things of earth.  This sad event occurred yesterday, Sunday, 21st.[4]
Picture
Burial vault of J.N.B. de Pouilly, St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, Square 1. Photo by Emily Ford.
The Daily Picayune made no note of the many cenotaphs de Pouilly himself had helped write, in the tablets and along the aisles of our cemeteries.  But if 140 years is a sufficient measure of the timelessness and impact of one’s work, his name certainly engraved upon many more memorials than just his own.
 

Below is a gallery of only a portion of de Pouilly’s work, and a few tombs inspired by his designs.  Photos by Emily Ford unless otherwise noted.
Picture
Tomb of the Iberian Society (1843), St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. Constructed by P.H. Monsseaux.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Left, Caballero tomb. Above, tomb of Blineau et Carriere. Both located in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.
Picture
Tomb of the Cazadores (1836), St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. Historic descriptions of its tomb depict it as grandiose. It has seen better days.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Left, A.D. Crossman monument (1859), Greenwood Cemetery. Photo by Mike and Bushy Hartman (FindaGrave). Above, Grailhe tomb (1850), St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.
Picture
Duplantier family tomb, St. Louis No. 2.
Picture
Picture
Above, Delachaise tomb (1850s) St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. Left, Societe Francaise tomb, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 (Wikimedia Commons User Infrogmation)
Picture
Picture
Tomb of Irad Ferry (1837), Cypress Grove Cemetery. Constructed by Newton Richards.
Picture
Picture
Above, Kohn tomb, photo by FindaGrave user AJ. Left, Maunsel White tomb (1869), both in Cypress Grove Cemetery. The tomb of Maunsel White was constructed by Monsseaux.
Picture
Above, Orleans Artillery tomb, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 (Wikimedia Commons user Infrogmation). Right, Puig tomb, St. Louis Cemetery No. 2
Picture
​[1] Ann Merritt Masson, “The Mortuary Architecture of Jacques Nicolas Bussiere de Pouilly,” 5-7.
[2] Peggy McDowell and Richard E. Meyer, The Revival Styles in American Mortuary Art (Popular Press, 1994), 59.
[3] Masson, 30-35.​
​[4] “In Memoriam – J.N. de Pouilly,” Daily Picayune, February 22, 1875, 2.
7 Comments

Mardi Gras in New Orleans Cemeteries, Part Three:  Dancing with the Dead

2/7/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
The top of a Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club parade float passes St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, 2009. (Wikimedia Commons)
Over the past week, New Orleaneans have been treated to nightly parades in neighborhoods Uptown and downtown, on the West Bank and in Metairie.  Today, Krewe of Thoth will ride down St. Charles Avenue, followed by Bacchus and others this evening.  The fever pitch of Mardi Gras is upon us, culminating on Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras Day. 
 
In the spirit of the season, we’ve mused on the place of cemeteries in Mardi Gras traditions – from the last resting places of Dead Rexes to the incorporation of death and cemeteries in costuming and floats.
 
Seldom do Mardi Gras celebrations themselves take place in New Orleans cemeteries.  But once or twice in a blue moon, amidst Storyville revelry or between the pages of a Gayarré novel, such things have happened.  Today, on this Sunday before Mardi Gras, we explore the few instances of Mardi Gras dancing on the graves.
Picture
Illustration of the St. Louis Cemetery Marchers Parade, from Buddy Stall's Louisiana (1991)
​The St. Louis Cemetery Marchers
In one of the St. Louis Cemeteries, the dead were entertained by an especially satirical parade in 1911, when maskers dressed as deceased voters processed through the cemetery gates to follow the tail of the parade of Rex.
 
The details of this event are discussed in two New Orleans histories, although primary accounts of the parade are scant.  In what James Gill refers to as one of the “drollest examples” of political satire in Mardi Gras parades, marchers dressed as skeletons emerged from the cemetery holding signs marked, “Count me in for several votes,” “I’ll be with you on election day,” and “Dead, but still a voter.”[1]  According to Buddy Stall’s New Orleans, the marchers labeled themselves “The Graveyard Pleasure Club,” “Girod Cemetery Voters League,” and “the Tombstone Brigade.”[2]
Picture
Aisle in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, c. 1920. (Library of Congress)
The members of the St. Louis Cemetery Marchers were anonymous, although one marcher later revealed his identity to be Edouard F. Henriques, a local judge.  He and other members were members of the Good Government League, part of the Progressive movement in Louisiana and, in the next year, supporters of “Bull Moose” presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt, much against the dominant Democratic "machine" in New Orleans. 
 

The Marchers emerged from St. Louis Cemetery (presumably No. 1, or possibly No. 2) after having “entertained the sexton” with their antics.  They caught up to Rex and followed along its route, as one parade-goer remarked, “Their silent message is more meaningful than any spoken word I can imagine.”  They continued behind the parade until police forces peacefully disbanded them, just before they reached City Hall.

The Elks Burlesque Circus
In the days leading up to the St. Louis Cemetery Marchers 1911 procession, a bigger, louder ruckus was taking place just blocks away.  At Elks Place and Canal Street, a great circus would take place, complete with lion tamers, elephants, and acrobats.  On the Friday before Mardi Gras, this circus paraded through the city, marching uptown as far as Felicity Street, and back through the Central Business District.[3]
Picture
Elks Place, c. 1906. The towering building at rear was the Criminal Courts Building, demolished in the 1930s. The New Orleans Public Library now stands at this spot. (New Orleans Public Library)
The enormous circus and parade were organized by the New Orleans Lodge No. 30, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, known casually as the Elks Lodge, and for whom Elks Place is named.  If you live in New Orleans, you probably know them for their tomb, which looks out on the intersection of Canal Street and City Park Avenue.
Picture
Elks Lodge (BPOE) tumulus. (Wikimedia Commons)
The 1911 circus and parade, complete with a petting zoo of baby elks, was held as a fundraiser for an imposing tomb the Elks Lodge hoped to construct in Greenwood Cemetery.  Elks members costumed as clowns and even traveled abroad to learn how to care for circus animals – said one article, “Quite a number of the antlered herd are taking corresponding lessons on how to manage elephants and camels.[4]
 
The big top Mardi Gras-season fundraiser was as ambitious as the organization’s tomb plans.  The Elks Lodge memorial is a tumulus:  a burial chamber which has been covered in earth, making it resemble a hill or burial mound.  While New Orleans is no stranger to tumuli – at one point in time, they were quite common in cemetery landscapes – the Elks Lodge tumulus is one of the most iconic of these structures in American cemeteries. 
 
The tumulus was constructed by Albert Weiblen at the cost of $10,000 – essentially $250,000 in 2016 dollars.[5]  Its subterranean walls were topped with a giant boulder of Alabama granite, on top of which a nine-foot-tall bronze elk was erected.  Two years and some minor (but noticeable) foundational issues later, the cemetery landmark was completed.
 
Today, organizations with communal tombs and society burial places often find great difficulty in raising the capital needed to restore their deteriorating cemetery property.  Perhaps it’s time once again to bring the circus to town for the benefit of our historic cemeteries.
Picture
Circus parade, c. 1900, location unknown. (Library of Congress)

Tintin Calandro:  The Mad Musician of the St. Louis Cemetery
Our final Mardi Gras cemetery story is exactly that:  a story.  On this blog, we like to keep things factual, but in the spirit of the prankishness and surreality of Carnival, we recall the tale of Tintin Calandro.
 
Celebrated New Orleans author Charles Gayarré (1805 – 1895) is memorialized in the city as its premiere 19th century historian.  A beautiful terra-cotta memorial to him sits at the divergence of Esplanade Avenue and Bayou Road.  He is best remembered for his History of Louisiana (1866), but he did write two novels as well, Fernando de Lemos, Truth and Fiction (1872) and Aubert Dubayet (1882).  Featured in both of these novels is Augustine Calandrano, more frequently referred to by the narrator as Tintin Calandro, French revolutionary exile, talented violin player, and eccentric sexton of St. Louis Cemetery.

In Fernando de Lemos, Tintin Calandro is a “genius of madness,” each night serenading his ghostly charges:
Picture
Trumpet-playing angel, tomb of Louis Prima, Metairie Cemetery. (Photograph by Emily Ford)
… I have been thinking how glorious my cemetery looks by moonlight.  There is nothing then to equal it.  What a scene worthy of the angels!  When it is thus one sea of serene radiance, I love to perform on my violin for the dead.  Beginning, I see at first a haze or vapor settling on each tomb, then shadowy forms glide upward through brick, marble, or granite.

An immense assembly gathers or my concert.  Some stand up, some sit down, others recline on their own tombs, as on sofas.  The little children, how daintily they look, God bless them!  Sometimes they dance before me, moving their tiny feet in harmony with my music… They sing in chorus, “Good-night, Tintin Calandro; good-night, dear Tintin Calandro,” and they vanish.  Ah!  if you could only see such a sight, you would like to dwell forever in my cemetery.
[6]
Calandro and Fernando de Lemos have a special  relationship in which they spend nights in the cemetery, discussing philosophy, love, ethics, and other profound topics amidst the tombs. 
 
Toward the end of Calandro’s life, it appears his fits of insanity worsened.  Nearing his own death, the old sexton fought frailty and his better senses in order to go to the cemetery for a final concert, on Shrove Tuesday:
 
                He said that the ghosts were going to have a Mardi Gras ball and he wanted to open the event by playing an overture, after which an orchestra of spirits would supply the music… [the narrator] accompanied the musician to the cemetery.  There Tintin greeted the ghosts, bade them be silent and seated, and then seating himself and his companion on a tombstone, he began to play.

                … In the spell which overcame him he saw the ghosts whisking past in the dance, and the mad excitement grew upon him until the sound of the violin was hushed.  Then Tintin apologized to his visionary audience, and allowed his friend to escort him home.

On the way home, Calandro related to his companion that one of the ghosts was “the former head of the orchestra at the St. Philip Theatre, and he had gone mad through family troubles, finally dying from the shock.”

                “Thank God, I am not mad – not from grief,” said Tintin, and this he kept on repeating all the way home.[7]
 
The romance of Tintin Calandro’s character was so captivating that it seems that in more than one instance New Orleaneans confused him for having been real person.  One wonders if Calandro may have been inspired by an actual sexton, although no source speculates on who that might be.

​Having witnessed the French Revolution in the 1790s, Calandro would have been one of the first sextons of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, which was founded in 1789.  Records from this early period are scant; the names of early sextons difficult to locate.  That Calandro’s character is Italian is also strange, as few Italian stonecutters or sextons resided in New Orleans prior to the 1850s.  
Picture
Tomb of Charles Gayarré, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. (Photograph by Emily Ford)
Picture
1853 advertisement for Etienne Courcelle, architect, stonecutter, and sexton of the St. Louis Cemeteries. From Soard's New Orleans Directory, 1853. (Scanned from Tulane University's Louisiana Research Collection)
Etienne Courcelle was sexton of the St. Louis Cemeteries in the 1850s, as was Etienne Demourelle.  Little documentation of their lives exists – certainly none to suggest that they played violin within the cemetery walls.  Both Courcelle and Demourelle are buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, as is Charles Gayarré himself.  The Mardi Gras ball at the cemetery has certainly had some distinguished attendees over the years.
 
It’s ever tempting to wonder who inspired Gayarré to create the remarkable character of Tintin Calandro.  For a researcher of New Orleans cemeteries, the desire to believe one of New Orleans sepulchral caretakers had the soul of a genius that may have touched the life of one of the city’s great authors is compelling.  Whether Tintin Calandro ever did exist under a different name may never be known.
 
But over the next few days, while indulging in the balls, parades, costumes, and debauchery of Mardi Gras, it’s nice to imagine the mad romantic soul of Tintin Calandro, philosopher, musician, sexton, and madman, reclining on his tomb on Mardi Gras night with his violin.

[1] James Gill, Lords of Misrule:  Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans (University Press of Mississippi:  1997), 166.
[2] Buddy Stall, Buddy Stall’s New Orleans (Gretna:  Pelican Publishing, 1990), 167-169.
​[3] “Elks Announce Route of Parade Preceding Burlesque Circus,” Daily Picayune, February 20, 1911, p. 2.
[4] “Elks’ Circus to be a Feature During Carnival Week Here:  Parade and Performances to be Filled with Features Farcy, Freakish and Funny,” Daily Picayune, January 15, 1911, 30; “Circus Catches:  Pokorny’s Little Elks Arrive for Big Show,” Daily Picayune, February 17, 1911, 7.
[5] “Elks’ Tomb to be Erected on Fine Greenwood Cemetery Site,” Daily Picayune, August 7, 1911, 7.
​[6] Excerpt from Fernando de Lemos, Truth and Fiction, featured in The Southern Bivouac, Vol. II, No. 1 (June, 1886), 112-114; James A. Kaser, The New Orleans of Fiction:  A Research Guide (Scarecrow Press:  2014), 92.
[7] “Tintin Calandro:  Judge Gayarré Tells the Story of the Mad Musician of St. Louis Cemetery,” Oachita Telegraph, January 20, 1887, 1.
0 Comments
    Picture

    ​About the Author:

    Emily Ford owns and operates Oak and Laurel Cemetery Preservation, LLC.  

    In addition to client-directed research, she meanders through archives and cemetery architectural history. 

    Follow Oak and Laurel's blog for updates and check out our Facebook page for more interesting content.

    Archives

    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015

    Categories

    All
    All Saints Day
    Brick
    Burial Records
    Canal Street Cemeteries
    Cemetery Symbolism
    Ceramic Portraits
    Chalmette National Cemetery
    Charity Hospital Cemetery
    Civil War
    Community Mausoleums
    Cypress Grove Cemetery
    Epidemics
    Girod Street Cemetery
    Greenwood Cemetery
    Historic Preservation
    Jewish Cemeteries
    Labor History
    Lafayette Cemetery No. 1
    Lafayette Cemetery No. 2
    Landscape Preservation
    Marble And Granite
    Mardi Gras
    Masonry
    Metairie Cemetery
    Odd Fellows Rest
    Sextons
    Society Tombs
    St. Joseph Cemetery No. 1
    St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
    St. Louis Cemetery No. 2
    St. Louis Cemetery No. 3
    Stonecutters
    St. Patrick Cemeteries
    St. Roch Cemetery
    St. Vincent De Paul Cemetery
    Vandalism
    World War I
    World War II
    Yellow Fever

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK!

    CONTACT US

Submit
About
​
Blog
Services
Portfolio
Resources
Contact
Proudly powered by Weebly