The Cemeteries of New Orleans

In The Cemeteries of New Orleans, Peter B. Dedek reveals the origins and evolution of the Crescent City's world-famous necropolises, exploring both their distinctive architecture and their cultural impact. Drawing on a fascinating body of research, Dedek takes readers from muddy fields of crude burial markers to extravagantly designed cities of the dead, illuminating a vital and vulnerable piece of New Orleans's identity. Where many histories of New Orleans cemeteries focus on the famous people buried within them, Dedek sets his sights on the marble cutters, burial society members, journalists, and tourists who shaped these graveyards into internationally recognizable emblems of the city. In his detailed exploration of cemetery architecture, Dedek reveals the impacts of ancient and medieval grave traditions and styles, the city's geography, and the arrival of trained European tomb designers, such as the French architect J. N. B. de Pouilly in 1833 and Italian artist and architect