Girod Street Cemetery: The Protestant Graveyard They Paved Over

Girod Street Cemetery: The Protestant Graveyard They Paved Over

Girod Street Cemetery no longer exists. Demolished in 1957 to make way for a parking lot and eventually the Superdome complex, it was once one of the most significant cemeteries in New Orleans—the first dedicated Protestant burial ground in a city dominated by Catholic traditions. Its destruction is one of the great acts of historical vandalism in the city’s history, and a cautionary tale about what happens when commerce and development win out over memory.

History

Girod Street Cemetery was established in 1822 to provide a burial ground for the city’s growing Protestant population. In early New Orleans, the Catholic Church controlled the cemeteries, and Protestant residents—many of them Anglo-American newcomers who arrived after the Louisiana Purchase—had nowhere to bury their dead according to their own traditions. Girod Street solved this problem, offering a non-Catholic alternative in what was then the developing American sector of the city, near the present-day Superdome.

The Napoleon Legend

One of the most persistent legends surrounding Girod Street Cemetery involves Napoleon Bonaparte. According to the story, a group of New Orleans sympathizers plotted to rescue Napoleon from his exile on St. Helena and bring him to New Orleans. A house on Chartres Street was allegedly prepared for his arrival, and a tomb in Girod Street Cemetery was supposedly reserved for him should he die in the city. Napoleon never made it to New Orleans—he died on St. Helena in 1821—but the legend has endured for two centuries, adding a layer of romantic intrigue to a cemetery that was otherwise fairly unremarkable.

Demolition

By the mid-twentieth century, Girod Street Cemetery had fallen into disrepair. The city, eager to develop the area around what would become the Superdome, ordered the cemetery demolished in 1957. The remains were supposed to be relocated, but the process was haphazard at best. Many graves were simply paved over. Construction workers building the Superdome and its parking facilities in the late 1960s and early 1970s reportedly encountered human remains in the soil—a grim reminder that the dead do not go quietly when their resting places are disturbed.

What Was Lost

The demolition of Girod Street Cemetery destroyed one of the few physical links to the early Protestant community in New Orleans—a community that built the American sector, developed the Garden District, and helped transform New Orleans from a Creole backwater into one of the most important cities in North America. The cemetery’s destruction also erased the graves of thousands of ordinary New Orleanians whose names and stories are now lost forever. Today, the site is part of the Superdome complex, and nothing marks the spot where the dead once lay. It is a parking lot, which in New Orleans feels like a particularly cruel fate.