Living Houses, Dead People and Famous Doors

Today was our day for living houses, dead people and famous doors.  We took the campground shuttle down to the French Quarter in New Orleans, where we first headed over to The Historic New Orleans Collection, a nonprofit foundation devoted to preservation of the culture and history of New Orleans.  The collection was amassed by General and Mrs. Kemper L. Williams, longtime residents of the New Orleans region.  Mr. Williams was heir to a cypress lumber business and fortune, and he and Mrs. Kemper were in the forefront of efforts begun after World War II to document and preserve the unique architecture of the French Quarter.

The main complex consists of five buildings that the Kempers renovated and joined together into a unique residence.  The buildings are remarkable not only because they demonstrate five distinct architectural styles prevalent over the years in the Vieux Carre, but also because the complex had continued in common ownership for most of the years that the buildings existed.

The complex is also known as one of the places Tennessee Williams lived.

Here is a photo of the front courtyard of the family house, which is hidden from the street from a high, gated wall:

The central courtyard for the entire complex is very spacious and, in some ways, is the organizing principle around which the various buildings have been combined:

After a tour of the Williams buildings, we walked over to the Basin Street Station, just north of the French Quarter.  Located on Basin Street, it was the terminus of a railroad line built to connect with a canal running through the French Quarter and north through the Treme quarter between the Mississippi River and Lake Ponchartrain.  Together, the railroad and canal were key routes for the transportation of goods around the country.

In the Basin Street Station is a model of how areas in the French Quarter once looked.  Here's Kathy examining one of the models:

Our primary reason for going to the Basin Street Station was to meet our tour guide for a tour of the Saint Louis Cemetery #1, the oldest Catholic cemetery in the area.  The tour is run by Save Our Cemeteries, a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving and repairing historic New Orleans cemeteries.  There are a number of other commercial tours of the cemeteries, but we wanted to give our money to an organization devoted to preservation and historical information.

As is well known, New Orleans cemeteries are known for their above-ground burial vaults.  While the practice became common because of the high water table in New Orleans (underground caskets could simply float up out of the ground!), the practice actually originated in Spanish custom after the Spanish took over New Orleans from the French in 1763 - a full 45 years after the French founded the city.  The cemeteries and burial vaults and mausoleums exhibit as diverse an architecture as the buildings in the French Quarter itself.

St. Louis Cemetery #1 is located just across Basin Street from the French Quarter, in the Treme District.  Just inside the entrance to the cemetery is the burial vault of the mother of a local artist.  He keeps the site decorated, including his painting of the face in bright colors:

 Another famous vault is that of Marie Laveau, a notorious "voodoo queen" who was actually also a Catholic - and thus entitled to be buried in this Catholic cemetery.  The colorful materials at the front base are offerings, presumably from voodoo believers or others paying their respects.  Unfortunately, the vault has been desecrated with hundreds of red "XXX" markings, most of which cannot be erased without damaging the fragile marble vault facings.

No tour of this cemetery would be complete without a stop at the famous pyramid-shaped tomb purchased and built by the actor Nicholas Cage.  His tomb is actually interesting architecturally because it exemplifies a recent practice of building the burial chambers from poured concrete, rather than from the traditional brick, mortar and stucco:

Many of the tombs are works of art, each unique.  We felt the following tomb was perhaps the most moving - all the more so because the figure of the crying angel on the top is slowly eroding from rain and pollution and seems to represent the fading remains of the figure:

Having sated ourselves on dead people, we looked for a place to sit and enjoy some New Orleans music while resting from all our walking.  We found the Famous Door, a music bar on the infamous Bourbon Street, whose sign states that it was established in 1934.

This particular establishment may well have been at this particular location all that time, since the following photo of the building (taken circa 1950 and housed in the Historic New Orleans Collection we visited earlier in the day) shows a sign outside the building that reads, in part, "Famous Door":

The music was great fun.  In contrast to typical jazz or blues, the Famous Door sports a very good rock'n'roll band that specializes in playing well-known songs from the 1960's and 1970's.  

We were sorely tempted to stay into the evening, but common sense and a fear of getting drunk made us change our mind about that.  We strolled back through the French Market and stopped to see the tumblers across from Jackson Square before meeting our campground shuttle in the Natchez steamboat parking lot.