New Orleans' Cast-Iron Tombs!

Okay, so don’t let the heat dissuade you from visiting New Orleans’ wonderful cemeteries in the summer. If the opportunity presents itself, jump on it. Remember, great art comes from great pain. They say there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing choices. That said, long pants and dress shoes may not have been the best choices for walking through New Orleans’ cemeteries in 92 degree weather. Now 92 degrees didn’t sound THAT hot, but here’s what Weather Atlas had to say about New Orleans’ tropical climate for June, 2025 when I was there:

“The average heat index in June is estimated at a very hot 102.2°F (39°C). Undertake extra safety actions, heat cramps and heat exhaustion are expected. Heatstroke may result from lengthy activity. Be advised, the heat index considers values for conditions in shade and with a light breeze. Direct sunlight might cause an increase of up to 15 Fahrenheit (8 Celsius) degrees in the heat index.”

Perhaps the weather would have been more tolerable had I been on a riverboat out on the Mississippi, but I wasn’t. I have to say, I’ve never appreciated large mausoleums more than when I was in NOLA, for the merciful shade they offer! I was there for a work conference in June, 2025, so I planned to take in a few cemeteries at the time. Scheduling was inopportune, as the annual conference for the Association for Gravestone Studies was happening at the same time, in York, PA, which is only about an hour’s drive from where I live in Philadelphia. Really would have liked to attend that, even virtually, but the gestalt was not now. Or then. So, given I would be in Nawlins for three days, I needed to hit some of those marvelous cemeteries. 

A few months prior, I got in touch with Nancy Jaynes who posts a lot about New Orleans cemeteries on Instagram (as @new_orleans_cemeteries) to help plan my trip. I had been to New Orleans twice, but decades ago, pre-Katrina. I was grateful for Nancy’s guidance as to which cemeteries to visit, on what days, hours of operation, etc. I had told her that one place I really wanted to see was the chapel inside St. Roch Cemetery, the one with all the antique prosthetics hanging on the walls! Unfortunately, when I checked St. Roch’s website, it said the chapel is only open the first Friday of each month from 11:00 am to Noon! That is one tight window. Again, my schedule would not permit visiting.

St. Roch Chapel, photo by Nancy Jaynes (@new_orleans_cemeteries)

But since you’re lathering with anticipation at that, here’s a photo Nancy made a few weeks after my visit. After I returned home, I got in touch with Nancy who graciously agreed to write a blog on St. Roch’s for the Cemetery Traveler, with her wonderful photos, so look for that coming soon!

But back to my June visit. Nancy and I planned to meet at St. Patrick’s Cemetery No. 2 on my second day. Therefore, I figured I’d hit St. Roch’s and another one on my first day. Even though I knew I could not get into the chapel, the St. Roch’s website makes the cemetery looks incredibly interesting. 

I thought it would make sense to visit two cemeteries each morning, before it got really hot. So I mapped out a few places I wanted to visit and made a plan. I would Uber/Lyft early in the mornings to arrive at the usual 8 a.m. opening time (most cemeteries here are gated and locked), do some photography for a couple hours, then rideshare to the convention center. A good thing is that all of these cemeteries are within twenty minutes of the convention center. New Orleans has about forty cemeteries to choose from! Many are large and would take hours to walk through. A few are open for guided tours only, but most are open to the public, from about 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

On the first day, Thursday, I called a Lyft driver to take me to St. Roch’s. I stopped in a convenience store in the Quarter and picked up a couple bottles of cold water and snacks, shoved them in my camera backpack and took to the streets to get my ride.

After driving awhile, my driver pulls over. We’re in front of Cypress Grove Cemetery, Canal Street, nowhere near St. Roch’s. Ah well, I figured I’d spend the morning here and put off St. Roch’s for my third day. Across City Park Avenue from Cypress Grove is the very large Greenwood Cemetery, with the massive Metairie two blocks away. I had intended to see all these anyway.

What I hadn’t expected was that it would be unbearably hot at 8 a.m. … each day. I’m talking sweat pouring down my face, stinging my eyes. Then it would rain every afternoon, so the humidity was omnipresent. After an hour, I felt like pouring the two bottles of cold water on my head instead of drinking them. But I didn’t want to die, so I drank in the shade of Cypress Grove's impressive entranceway. I could see down the rows that its old tombs were not all that interesting. All above ground, which is the New Orleans way. As Mary LaCoste says in her book, Death Embraced - New Orleans Tombs and Burial Customs, this is as much a European tradition as it is a physical necessity due to New Orleans being at sea level (can’t dig due to the high water table). I only spent a half hour in here, because the much more opulent Greenwood was beckoning to me from across the street, with its towering monuments. 

Leeds Tomb, Cypress Grove Cemetery

But Cypress Grove will always have a special place in my heart – it was here that I saw my first cast iron tomb, the Leeds Tomb! This is one of NOLA’s oldest cemeteries, established in 1838 by the Fireman’s Fund, to honor New Orleans’ volunteer firemen and their families. When that cemetery became full, the Firemen’s Charitable & Benevolent Association opened the much larger cemetery in 1842 across the street, called Greenwood. The cast iron tomb is essentially a mausoleum, made of brick, and plated with cast iron panels. Sometimes the iron is rusted like the tomb you see here, and sometimes they are well-maintained and painted! 

Mer-lion downspout!

I owe my knowledge of these unique architectural marvels to Nancy Jaynes, who has posted on Instagram many photos of them with wonderful historic information. This one with the fish (or mer-lion, if you look closely!) downspouts is simply spectacular. In all of NOLA’s forty cemeteries, there are only 16 cast iron tombs. I feel honored that during my short, whirlwind visit, I think I saw five of them! You can read more about them at this link.

There are of course many small details throughout these cemeteries which add very personal touches to the grave sites – small angels, plaques, sparkly beaded necklaces. The six-foot tall tomb buildings themselves are usually very similar, with only the names and dates varying from one to the next, and the next, and the next, as you peer down rows and rows of these above-ground burial buildings. Whitewashing seems to be popular. Which of course makes them blinding to the eyes in the torrential Louisiana sunshine. This photo above just seems to be of a bright white tomb. I really cannot fully express the pain these things cause when you are trying to squint at and photograph them! And no, it did not occur to me to bring sunglasses.

Burned-out van with Greenwood Cemetery in background

As I walked out to City Park Avenue, I noticed a burned out van right in front of Greenwood Cemetery. Odd. Fried chicken parts on the back seat springs. I crossed over and entered Greenwood. I was taken by its beautifully ornate – and dry – fountain. I climbed inside to do a little shooting – inside the fountain, that is. Workers driving by didn’t seem to care. As it was getting hotter by the second, I realized I needed to plan my time better so I climbed out of the fountain and began roaming around the grounds. I got some ok photos of the fountain, but it was a pyrrhic victory. 

Miltenberger cast-iron clad tomb, Greenwood Cemetery

Greenwood has a few cast iron tombs as well – the most amazing of which is this recently-painted silver one! The figures on the door are actually cast iron as well. I tugged a bit on the angel, but the door did not open (yes, I know, my sins are a stench in the nostrils of God, as Billy Graham would say). On Greenwood’s webpage, you can see a photo of this Family Tomb in its prior state. Emily Ford, in her blog post () tells us that Greenwood Cemetery has six cast-iron tombs, five of which were produced by Wood & Miltenberger & Co., a branch of Wood & Perot Ironworks. At six iron-clad tombs, Greenwood has the most of any cemetery in New Orleans. And one of them is for the Miltenberger iron works family.

But Greenwood has many wonders besides its cast iron architecture, such as the tall and stately fireman memorial and various Civil War monuments. All along the fencing facing the roadway are banners extolling the fact that it is “Still Affordable!” Affordable is key, as Greenwood is situated right next to Metairie Cemetery, where a plot will cost you double the amount of money! $5,000 versus $10,000 for a basic plot. In fact, the market for trading cemetery property seems to be a hot one in New Orleans, as you can see from these sites:

https://www.buriallink.com/cemeteries/greenwood-cemetery-and-mausoleum-la

https://thecemeteryexchange.com/tce-metairie-la.htm

https://thecemeteryexchange.com/25-0423-4-featuredlisting-la.htm

I really wanted to get to the Metairie, so after only about half an hour in Greenwood, I exited and began walking down City Park Avenue, away from the tempting chicory coffee and powdered-sugar-covered beignets at the Morning Call Coffee Stand and toward Metairie. More about my adventures in that fabulous place coming soon!

Sunrise in the Atlantic City Cemetery

What can I say about the Atlantic City Cemetery that I haven’t already said? A lot, probably, since I really don’t know anything about it. I’ve visited a few times, but I’ve never done any actual research. I just like going there when I’m in the area. I was in Ventnor (next to AC) with my family a couple weekends ago (mid August, 2014) so I got up early and drove inland to the cemetery.

I’m in the habit of heading out at sunrise before my wife and daughter are awake. I jumped in the car and drove the approximate five miles to Pleasantville, NJ, the town in which the cemetery actually resides. Not much going on at the shore at that time of day, though it did look a bit like rain. That was the actual prediction, and I was kind of hoping it would. I started the Facebook page “Cemeteries in the Rain” this past year (2014) so I’ve actually been trying to capture some images of, well, that.

Mausoleum glass in Greenwood

The rain threatened all morning, and there was some odd lighting. I photographed a few statues in the cemetery against the partly cloudy, but bright sunrise. I suppose statues and monuments all face one direction for a reason (the Victorian version of feng shui?), but it seems like that is never the direction I want them to be facing! You would also assume that mausoleum stained glass faces east or west, so the glass gets as much sunrise and sunset light as possible. Wrong! Over the course of the two hours I spent here and in the neighboring Greenwood Cemetery, it got headlight-dark a couple times, but then brightened up.

Mausoleum, Atlantic City Cemetery

Actually, my feng shui comment was not really a joke. Feng shui, the Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing things with the surrounding environment has actually been around since 4000 B.C. The practice originated with the ancient Chinese Book of Burial's principles relating the flow of qi (pronounced “chi”), an invisible life force, to the appropriateness of a tomb's location (ref.). So feng shui, the practice of positioning your lawn furniture in a certain way, actually originated with burial practice! According to Wikipedia, “Historically, feng shui was widely used to orient buildings—often spiritually significant structures such as tombs, but also dwellings and other structures—in a manner meant to … bind the universe, earth, and humanity together.”

Memorial sculpture in the Atlantic City Cemetery, sunrise

Death certainly binds humanity together, and the western world Victorians were as serious about death as the ancient Chinese and Egyptians. One look at the grand monuments and mausoleums will tell you that. Maybe "serious" is not exactly the right word, perhaps "accepting" is a better choice. And accepting is what I needed to be this morning, when the early rays of the sun were dramatic and golden. I experimented with this angel statue (below) - shooting her frontally into the sunrise (with fill flash) and from the rear illuminated by the sun, her white marble wings temporarily gilded, auriferous.

Mangled grating

You can enter both of these Victorian-era Pleasantville cemeteries any time of day or night as most of the gates are either broken or missing. That said, the grounds and monuments are in surprisingly fine condition. I suppose there is little vandalism here, though I did see some mangled bronze window grating on the largest mausoleum in Greenwood. The grating was there to protect the stained glass window, but it appeared that someone tried to remove the grating, probably to sell it for scrap. But generally, no one seems to venture into either cemetery to cause much mischief. None of the other (albeit less valuable) metal decorative objects have been stolen, the mausoleum stained glass is all intact, the statues are not broken. Even these forlorn and loosely-placed baby blocks (below) remain in their (I assume) original positions.

Child's grave, Atlantic City Cemetery, NJ

If you saw these cemeteries from the air, they would appear as three large rectangles. Atlantic City Cemetery makes up the two left rectangles (separated by an old set of railroad tracks) and the right rectangle, Greenwood, is separated from the AC Cemetery by West Washington Avenue. (Click link for aerial view.) The center portion of the trinity looks like the older original AC Cemetery, which began in 1865. While they may have originally been two distinct cemetery companies, they are now listed on the Internet as the “Atlantic City Cemetery and Greenwood Cemetery Associations.”

I like exploring these places when no one else is awake. Their little mysteries are usually solved in my mind by conjecture. For instance, why is this lone monument shrouded by tall weeds when everything else in the Atlantic City Cemetery is meticulously maintained? How incongruous it seemed to have a freshly-dug grave marked with a simple wooden cross right next to the elaborate mausoleum below. I drove to various parts of the cemeteries when it looked like rain, so as not to be caught in it. Did I want it to rain or didn’t I? I suppose I felt strongly both ways. I was prepared to get some good photographs either way.

It never did rain during my walk through the cemeteries, although it did drizzle later in the day as I lay on the beach. A strange feeling, lying there in the hot sun, waves lapping at your feet, while the cool rain sprinkles down on you. Like dreaming too close to the surface. One thing’s for sure – the dead don’t care whether it rains or shines. They also don't care if their graves are desecrated - but we should.

Summer Shore Cemeteries

Ah, the Jersey shore in summer! I had my family at Long Beach Island for five days in mid-June and the weather was glorious. Beach, sun, pool, everything was perfect (except for the ticket I got for not wearing my seat belt) – the only thing missing was a trip to a graveyard!

I’m sure I’m one of a select few people who think of such things while on vacation. To make it easier on my wife and four-year-old daughter, I usually head out early before they wake up. So I planned a sunrise trip up the island and over to the mainland to hit the Staffordville Cemetery near Tuckerton (across the bay from LBI).

I’ve photographed a few cemeteries in this area but had never been to Staffordville Cemetery. Other than its simple existence on a map, I could find nothing about it on the Internet. So I made the trip on a Monday morning, shortly after sunrise. Sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean can be breathtaking, but of course, I missed it. Got to the beach at 6 a.m. and sunrise must have been 5:30. So I jumped into my wife’s Toyota RAV4 and headed north up the island. Cops all over the place here trying to nab speeders and folks not wearing seatbelts, so I really had to crawl the five miles or so to the causeway to Manahawkin.

Manahawkin, New Jersey coastline at dawn

The ride was peaceful, not many people about yet. After crossing onto the mainland, Manahawkin, New Jersey is the first major town you get to. If you head north or south on Route 9, there is a cemetery within a half mile either way of the intersection. I’ve been to both in the past, and they are worth the visit: Manahawkin Baptist Cemetery (north) and Greenwood Cemetery (south). Since I was driving past Greenwood, I figured I might stop there on the way back if I had time. Staffordville was about two miles south of here.

I was on the lookout for “Cemetery Road,” as the Staffordville Cemetery appeared (on the map) to be off Route 9 down this road a few blocks. Found the street sign with no problem, though it was almost hidden by all the other signs around it. I drove down the quiet road alongside a trailer park and saw the cemetery at the end. Very unassuming little place. As my grandmother might have said, “it was a small, sad little graveyard.”

This is the pine barrens, as they call it – pine trees and sand. A cemetery sign made out of timber, no gate or fence. One large marble monument to Rev. Samuel Parker’s wife, the rest regular smaller stones. A fenced-in family plot, veterans markers, flags, weather-worn lawn and garden statues, a penny on a headstone. Someone had placed a few stone fragments together in the sand to spell out the words “FATHER HE.”

The graveyard was only about 150 feet deep and 200 feet wide, clean, no trash, no graffiti. Some old Christmas decorations here and there. Old grave markers from the mid-1800s to a few newish ones, including a Vietnam Vet who died in 2006. Some old sea shells adorned a few of the graves. Weird, yellowish-green plant life covered most of the sand.

I began to wonder how many thousands of these small graveyards must exist, and how many thousands of people drive past them without a second thought. These graveyards house tiny memorials to hundreds of thousands of individual lives that have passed. The lives spent in Staffordville, perhaps, may have been spent fishing, farming, sailing – even being a reverend’s wife in the 1850’s. What must that have been like, I wonder, being a reverend’s wife back then?

On my way back to LBI, I did spend some time in Greenwood, a larger and fancier burial ground. The traffic picked up a bit of volume by then, mostly mainlanders going to work Monday morning in Manahawkin or to LBI to work the tourist trade. I would be following them soon, headed back to life after spending a bit of time here with death. These regular drivers probably all know where Greenwood is because of its large wrought iron sign. By the same token, most of them are probably unaware of the existence of the smaller, Staffordville Cemetery. Out of sight, out of mind. Which is why it seems so important to me to hunt down these small, hidden cemeteries. They exist, after all, to honor - and help us remember - the dead.